In the sports-obsessed United States, many families assume that the ticket to a hefty college scholarship is athletic prowess. Not so. Which athletes get the biggest scholarships? Unless you’re a D1 athlete in a large revenue-producing sport, your odds of a big athletic scholarship are low. You need to have strong academics to get the biggest scholarships. So the athletes that receive the biggest aid are ones who study the most and ultimately receive an academic scholarship.
Just look at the total numbers
Between the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) over $4 billion in athletic scholarships are dispersed every year. That might sound like a hefty chunk of change. But, when you do the math and look at the overall dynamics of athletic scholarships, you’ll see that number can be misleading.
Of that $4 billion, only approximately one-quarter of it will be available to graduating high school seniors, or $1 billion. There are approximately 190,000 D1 athletes (100,000 men and 90,000 women) and over 140,000 D2 student athletes. With over 80,000 incoming first-year athletes potentially receiving scholarships each year, that means that, on average, an athlete might expect to receive about $12,500 in scholarship dollars. Not bad, you may be thinking. But it likely won’t cover the entire cost of a college education unless you receive one of those coveted D1 full-ride athletic scholarships.
A Full-Ride Tuition Athletic Scholarship is hard to get
But, keep in mind that “full-ride tuition scholarships” only really exist for a few sports (men’s football and basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball and gymnastics). The full-ride typically only applies to those large revenue-generating sports. So, not all D1 athletes receive a full tuition scholarship. Note, too, that many players at all levels of varsity play are on their teams with no scholarship money, at all. While Division 3 (D3) players never receive athletic scholarships (approximately 200,000 D3 student-athletes), Division 1 and 2 teams carry several players who receive zero award dollars.
Academic Scholarship Instead of Athletic Scholarship
Contrast all this with the facts and figures of academic scholarships and the average awards given to families. In 2024-2025, the average financial award per student was almost $17,000 with $12,000 in grants.
But it’s not distributed evenly—just as the athletic scholarship money is distributed unevenly, so too are academic scholarship dollars. No surprise: the best athletes (in certain sports) get more money than other athletes (in other sports). The best students with the best grades and tests scores get more money than other students.
But which is the better bet? Where should your son or daughter spend the most time and energy in order to get a better scholarship and reduce the cost of college?
Strong academics is your best chance to receive aid
Here’s why. No matter what the scenario, having strong academic credentials is appealing for both colleges and college coaches. And yes, it can even help your child be recruited for that varsity collegiate spot on the team.
At best, college athletic recruiting is a crapshoot. Even the most seemingly talented players may not get the kind of coach interest that they believe they deserve. Every year, every coach seeks something different for their team and needs that different something to varying degrees depending upon how much they need it. And whether you offer it, the calculus of whether you’ll get recruited and how much money you might be offered can change. Add into this that many sports are not well-supported financially at many colleges. The large majority of sports are “equivalency sports” that have a bucket of money that has to be divided up across all players, and suddenly you have a recipe for total scholarship unpredictability. Will your child get recruited? Maybe. Maybe not.
As shown in this NCAA athletic probability report, the odds are low that your athlete will be competing at the D1 level in any sport.
Will your child get a lot of athletic scholarship money? Highly unlikely.
On the other hand, everybody wants a good student. Many institutions are more than willing to provide significant scholarship dollars to get that high-flyer. There is no gray here. No unpredictability. No complicated calculation. What constitutes a strong student is generally objectively agreed upon across all colleges: A solid performance in classwork as reflected by the high school transcript and potentially in your standardized (SAT and ACT) test scores. Contrast this to the subjectivity of athletic recruiting, and you’ll see why spending time studying may be a better bet than spending money on that extra session of private coaching.
Plus, coaches are desperate for good students that they can recruit since they help out the coach on many levels. Coaches need to meet certain academic standards both with their recruiting class high school performance as well as ongoing with their varsity team’s collegiate academic achievements. Often, coaches will have what they consider to be “academic recruits”. These academic recruits may not be considered superstars in their sport but can help buoy the team in the classroom and in practice. They get actively recruited to be on the team though, admittedly, these players don’t usually get much in the way of large athletic scholarships. But, they often do get sizable merit scholarships because of the strength of their academics.
So, which athletes get the biggest scholarships? The ones who don’t rely on their athletic prowess to be the main driver of their potential scholarship dollars and who study, study, study!
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Andrea Aronson
Educational Consultant
