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We get the question all the time of, “What grades do I need to get a Division 1 scholarship?
Or what grades do I need to be eligible to play in college?” The NCAA does have restrictions
there and now it is on a sliding scale, so it is not an exact answer. It used to be like
around a 2.3 GPA and around an 800 Math Verbal SAT, which are very poor grades.
The myth out there is, “Hey you just need to be this level of a student to be able to
play in college sports.” If you are 6’8” and 350 pounds and run a 4.540 and you are
a freak athlete and you are ridiculously skilled in your sport and you are one of the top 10
kids in the nation in your sport, you probably do just need to be one step over eligible
– right? You just need to pass that test and get a 2.3 and get the 820 Math Verbal,
or the sliding scale is now. Assuming you are not that level, which 99.9% of us are
in that category, grades are so important. Because the next level, other than NCAA eligibility,
is you actually have to be able to get into the school. Each individual school will have
different levels of admission. Fifty percent of the schools in the nation
need at least a 3.0 to get into their school. Think about that for a second. There are roughly
1,800 schools that offer sports, different for every sport. If you have a 2.9 GPA in
high school, you are cutting your chances in half right off the bat. That is just one
level. The second level is the level for you to get
academic money from the school. So of course, if a 3.0 is the cut off to get in, then maybe
a 3.5 is the cut off to get academic money. Let’s take a scenario that is very common
that I have a lot as a college coach. If I have a kid and I have one full scholarship
to give and I am looking at two kids. Let’s say one of the kids is a really poor student,
so I would have to use a full scholarship or a 100% scholarship for that athlete. I
have another kid who is a good student and he is going to qualify for a 50% academic
scholarship. So I only have to use a 50% scholarship on that kid. I could technically get two of
those kids for the price of one. Even if that kid was a little bit worse of a player, in
my opinion, I am more apt to take the good student because I am only using half the scholarship.
Now remember I only have a certain number of scholarships that I could use, so I would
much rather give a half than a full. If I give the half scholarship, I get to keep the
other half to use on somebody else. Now add on to the fact that I would probably rather
coach the good student because I don’t have to worry about study hall. I don’t have
to worry about checking up with their teachers and making sure they don’t flunk out, because
I don’t want to give a kid a scholarship, teach them and coach them for a year, then
have them flunk out. Then I’ll end up in the same boat next year.
I also would probably make the assumption that the smarter the kid is in the classroom
and the harder working they are in the classroom; the better they are going to be at picking
up my offense, at picking up my defense, at being coachable, and so on at being hard working
and doing what I want them to do. If they are not doing what their high school teachers
want them to do, why are they going to do what I want them to do when they come to college?
So for all of those reasons, academics are so important. Another twist on that is sometimes
being a good enough student can get you into a school that you otherwise would not have
gotten into. Let’s take the elite schools in the nation like the Ivy League and the
Patriot League. What they will have, of course very hard to get into those schools, as a
regular student. The athletics at those schools, being the Division 1, will have a waiver system
where say the volleyball coach will be allotted say four kids that do not meet the criteria
to get into that school on their own. They can pull four kids and get them into the school,
but only four. If you are good enough to get into that school on your own, they don’t
have to use one of those waivers on you. So when somebody asks me, “What kind of
grades do I need to play this sport in college or whatever,” my answer is always, the absolute
best grades that you can get. If you want to save money on college, your batting average
or your points per game or your assists per game or your ERA, isn’t as important as
your GPA, your SAT and your ACT. Those are your most important statistics when it comes
to saving money on college.