Contributor, Rick Paine, is a friend and an expert on the college recruiting process. He is also the Director of Swimming at American College Connection.
I know this may be hard for some of you to admit, but mom and dad were right…
Grades Do Count
College coaches will look at your times first to see if you can help them and then immediately look at your grades. Recruits with good times and good grades are much more affordable than a recruit with just good times. Coaches like to help recruits get academic scholarships first then fill in with athletic scholarships. It obviously makes their swimming money stretch farther.
- All College coaches look for student-athletes who have at least a 3.5 GPA.
- A lot of college coaches look for student-athletes who have a GPA between 3.0 and 3.5.
- Some coaches look for student-athletes who have a GPA between 2.5 and 3.0.
- Very few college coaches look for student-athletes who have a GPA below 2.5.
To qualify for an academic scholarship in college you would need to at least be close to meeting the following criteria (these are approximate and each institution has different criteria):
- High school cumulative GPA at 3.5
- SAT score around 1150 (math and reading) ACT around 28
- Be in the top 10% in your graduating class.
If you become academically ineligible once you are on the team here is what the coaches lose:
· a team member
· your scholarship for a period of time
· the recruit they turned down in order to sign you
College coaches have to be concerned about your academics. They can’t afford to waste time and scholarship money on a great swimmer who doesn’t go to class and who will likely become academically ineligible. If you become academically ineligible the team not only loses you, but they lose your scholarship for a period of time. If enough team members become ineligible the NCAA can sanction the school and team.
“Our goal is to win championships with nice kids who are graduating. We may be in the entertainment business on the weekends, but we are in the education business during the week.”
— Mack Brown, University of Texas Head Football Coach
American College Connection is a swimswam partner.
Best comments i have seen on scholarships in a long time. Our club coaches are constantly harping about attendance at TWO 5 am practices a week. The reality is that these practices hurt 99.9 percent of the kids as it takes away from their academic performance. If your swimmer is not on the podium at jr nationals forget about any significant athletic money. Our club coach is a fool he has meetings telling parents about how he is preparing the swimmers in college. Reality is his schedules may prevent the swimmers from getting any type of scholarship money and the parents who believe his stories about “full rides” are fools.
As a fairly mediocre club swimmer, I can assure you that two mornings a week is NOTHING. My former teammates who now swim in college swim 11 practices a week- at D3 schools. I swim 9 a week and have a social life and grades and test scores to get me into almost any college in the nation. It’s all about learning to properly manage your time. It can be done. Obviously, you have to be flexible…..I don’t make 9 every single week ever, but pretty consistently. Work with coaches. But have realistic expectations for college. D3 offers no money, but they are still swimming quite a lot. Every coach who I’ve talked to in the recruiting process so far… Read more »
I agree with RW. My HS does 3 mornings a week at 5:30. If anything, morning practices wake me up and thus any attention lost in second hour is just shifted to first. The key with morning practices is stressing that the swimmers entire schedule has to be shifted two hours forward. The swimmer must eat at 4:30 to wake his body up, and immediately after afternoon practice have dinner. Early to bed, early to rise. The morning practices do not ruin the grades. Swimming repeatedly has the highest GPA of all teams and we have many over-4.0’s (AP point).
Hi have 2 swimmers that are pretty good – both made varsity freshman year, both good enough to swim in college if they want. One swimmer simply could not hack the club/HS schedule, the AM practices, etc. and the other could. Same support system at home, same coaching staff, roughly same GPA and test scores. Everyone is different.
The truth is if you’re not a top recruit with nationally ranked times youre gonna need some good grades the faster you are the less grades matter vice versa… its a shame its this way but thats just sports.
Unless a fast swimmer’s grades are so bad that they are academically ineligible to swim in any meets…then that person is of no use to the team. Unfortunately some teams figure out who these swimmers are the hard way…you are correct it is a shame
I’d love it if collegeswimming.com or college swim coach ass’n or some other entity did a “reality check” poll or stats report on what a freshman can expect in terms of athletic $$ offers, especially the men.
My son’s coaches did a good job setting the expectation level, but it’s still very surprising how little $$ is out there for men, and I bet half the stories you hear about kids getting athletic scholarships are inflated or outright lies.
The good news is, my swimmer played his cards right and got generous academic offers from 3 of the 5 schools he applied to, so if he gets any athletic $$ his sophomore year and beyond, it’ll just be icing on… Read more »
SWIMMOM the best way to get an idea of the potential for athletic scholarship is to look at the conference results. Coaches will usually offer some scholarship money for a swimmer with three events that score in the top 16 at conference. They obviously offer more for three events in the top 8 and even more if their times would put them on relays.
You are correct about the stories from kids and parents regarding scholarship offers. Most of them are very inflated. We teach our kids and parents that listening to recruiting stories from parents is like playing poker….you never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.
It is not about what a school is… Read more »
Can also attest to the inflation of reports of “full rides” and “athletic scholarships” that circulate like a game of phone tag among swim team parents.
The comment about the so-called inverse relationship between speed and grades can be misleading. Even with multiple Olympic Trial cuts you’re not getting into very selective academic schools, and not just Stanford, if your GPA is under 3.0 and SAT scores below 1200. The “inverse relationship” between grades and speed at these schools comes into play with GPA and test scores that are higher than 3.0 and 1200 but still below the median at the school (3.5 and higher with 1400 median SAT scores). Then speed is factor in the decision making process.… Read more »
Good advice, but there are MANY schools in the slower conferences that don’t have funding for their men’s programs. So, you may THINK you’d qualify for a scholarship, but there aren’t any.
SWIMMOM – great thoughts, and glad it worked out well for your son. Especially on the men’s side of college swimming, there’s a lot of misinformation and rumors of who gets what.
You asked about information – there was an article in USA Swimming’s Splash magazine about a month or two ago regarding athletic scholarships for college swimmers. Nutshell version – people are genuinely surprised that there are very few “full rides” in this sport and that many more schools are not “fully funded”.
You hit on a great point about the academic side, which should be advice to any prospective college swimmer. A great academic record can make college much more affordable, and accessible (so that a… Read more »
Great point Gary. I hope the swimmers are listening.
In Div I the faster you are is inversely proportional to how good your grades need to be, with the possible exception of Stanford.
why not Stanford?
Also, Rick….in Div. II to be able to “stack” or combine an athletic scholarship with an academic scholarship, the SA must have a High School GPA of 3.5…..if it is under 3.5….the SA can receive EITHER the academic scholarship OR the athletic scholarship, but not BOTH. Thus, it makes it even more important to have outstanding study habits throughout your high school years. It is nearly impossible to raise a 3.4 GPA to a 3.5 GPA by working hard just during your senior year. The early years; Freshman and Sophomore years are even more important to have those outstanding study habits.
This is not a division rule. That might be a specific school’s rule, but not a Division II rule.
What I believe Gary may be referring too is that if the HS GPA is above 3.5, then the merit/academic scholarship doesn’t count in the total scholarship aid for the NCAA. For example if the college is $50,000 per year and you receive $15,000 in merit/academic scholarship and the college gives out $15,000 in athletic aid and you receive no other financial aid, then when the NCAA counts that scholarship against a team, it is only given a score of 0.3 as opposed to a 0.6 score. A 1.0 means a full scholarship unit!
So what this means is that athletic aid can go further and you can stretch out the budget to more incoming freshman. What this really means… Read more »
Yes, and those schools that are fully funded have to be cognizant of this. But as I said above, that’s not the situation at every Division II school.