Chances are you would really love to get your child to win a full athletic scholarship. Scholarships can give a chance to kids who might not otherwise be able to get a college education. Here is a quick guide to help you understand how scholarships work.
There is a huge amount of competition
There are about 1,000,000 boys who are actively playing high school football, while only around 19,000 football scholarships are available. This is a tiny percentage and means that it’s very competitive and it can be unlikely that your child will be chosen. In comparison to football there are around 600,000 girls who are active in field and track, but there are only 4,500 scholarships available.
There aren’t many full ride scholarships
Most of the programs don’t pay out for all of the schooling costs and are capped. This means that the money needs to be found from somewhere else as well, even though the child is getting a scholarship. Many colleges are splitting up their scholarship funds to allow more students to attend using the same budget.
They don’t pay out huge amounts
Many athletic scholarships pay out somewhere between $10,000 and $11,000. The only sports that offer a complete full ride to all athletes who get scholarships are football, women’s volleyball and basketball, as well as men’s basketball. So if your child doesn’t do one of these sports then their schooling won’t be completely paid for even if they get a scholarship.
Your child probably won’t be discovered unless you make schools aware of them
The college scouts most likely don’t know who your child is and will need to be introduced to the right schools and coaches at the schools they want to go to. By making the schools aware there’s much more of a chance that they’ll be noticed and they’ll have a higher chance of getting a scholarship.
Ideally you should try and do some good PR work so that more colleges are aware of the skills of your child and will start to notice them more.
Make an action video for Youtube
To make it easy for coaches to view your child’s skills on the field, put together a video that shows their best work and upload it to Youtube. When you send out emails to schools and coaches include a link to the Youtube video so that the coach can instantly see them in action.
A lot of scholarships are spread out between multiple students
Each of the colleges in Division I and II are limited to a certain amount of scholarships. This means that to get more of the best athletes the coaches will split the money into smaller scholarships, meaning that each one is worth a lot less than if it was given to just one student.
