Information about athletic scholarships

- So I see a whole lot of families who are hoping to pay for college with an athletic scholarship. Being recruited to play college athletics is actually a whole process that often starts as early as the ninth or 10th grade, and requires many steps and a lot of research. And one thing to know that I think a lot of families miss is that only NCAA Division I and II schools give any athletic scholarships at all. Division III schools are actually prohibited from giving out any athletic scholarships. So it really depends on whether your student, you as a student or your parents, feel that you are able to play at the very highest elite levels of college sports that are represented by Division I and Division II schools. The other thing to know is that every year there are about 7.7 million athletes across the country who are competing for only 138,000 athletic scholarships. So very, very few students actually ever receive an athletic scholarship at all, regardless of how good an athlete they are in their sport. The other thing to know is that if you exclude men's football and men's basketball, the average athletic scholarship is only about $8700 a year, which is far, far below the average cost of attendance at pretty much any four year college or university.