Almost every athlete’s goal is to earn the biggest possible scholarship. While this is not necessarily the best approach, most families simply do not have the funds to spend extra money on a college education. So very often, limiting the cost to the bare minimum is what families are looking for and it is something that we as a college placement agency always try to accomplish for you. Now, in order to attain that goal, there are a ton of things you can do as a student-athlete to help your cause. Since we did not want to bore you guys with a massive list of dos and don’ts, here are five tips, some of them maybe unexpected for some of you, that will maximize your scholarship opportunities:
- Stay Eligible: Sounds simple, but still gets overlooked by a lot of student-athletes. Being academically ineligible or not receiving your amateurism certification from the NCAA or NAIA are huge red flags to coaches. Here is a rule of thumb, if you are not eligible, chances are coaches will not want to recruit you!
- Take care of your academics: Yes, academics are important! The better your high school grades and test scores, the more attractive you will be to coaches. It might help you qualify for an academics scholarship, which helps the coach out tremendously, because that money will not come out of his or her budget. Furthermore, the coach will know that he or she will not have to worry about you struggling with your academics while in college, again making you more attractive compared to a similar athlete with weaker academics.
- Maximize your exposure: Playing on the biggest possible stage and if possible in front of coaches is a huge benefit if you are looking for a big scholarship. Coaches like to see how you perform under pressure and how you do in difficult situations. So if you can participate in big games or tournaments and do that with coaches in attendance, it will go a long way.
- Show coaches the best version of yourself: Believe it or not, this is becoming more of an issue as of late. Social media, athlete entitlement, and parents getting too involved, definitely have started hurting certain athletes during the recruiting process. In order to avoid these issues, keep your social media clean and without any pictures or comments that might harm your chances. Try to be humble, polite and show maximum interest when interacting with coaches. And lastly, don’t forget that coaches are wanting to recruit you and not your parents. So make sure your parents take a back seat and that they ideally let you interact with the coaches all by yourself.
- Play well: Sounds like a no-brainer, but oddly enough very often gets forgotten by athletes and their parents. However, it is very simple. The better you perform, the faster your times, the better your scores, the higher your ranking, the bigger scholarships you will receive. On top of that, being a good teammate and showing a good a work ethic will also go a long way. Because don’t forget, coaches most likely are recruiting several athletes of the exact same level for maybe one or two spots. So anything you can do to stand out by improving your scores, ranking, or times, will maybe be the one factor that makes a difference!
As mentioned above, there are numerous other things you can do to maximize your scholarship opportunities. We obviously help you with these things throughout the process and will teach you those things when needed. But always remember, the competition for these big scholarships is fierce, so you need to put in the maximum effort and try do everything as well as you can. So keep that in mind and reach out to us if you have any questions or if you would like to schedule on of our free evaluation calls!