Best way to get a scholarship?

Curious! Does a player have a good change of getting a scholarship playing in LH, or should they try to make ECNL to up their changes? What about a player that plays in PPL, do they have any chance of even having any colleges consider them? I know it all depends on the player, and how good they are, but just wondering if someone wasn't able to make the higher teams for whatever reason do they still have a chance.

Based on your topic title "Best Way to Get a Scholarship?", the answer is not especially related to the other questions you pose. What I mean is that the best way to get a college scholarship is through good grades, a high SAT or ACT, class rank, connection with volunteer organizations, etc. Getting a scholarship through select soccer is generally a low-percentage gamble. Playing ECNL greatly increases a players chances. As the player drops down the rank-and-file, so do her chances of getting money to play soccer.

But the big question is what you consider a "good" scholarship. The player will need to be best-of-the-best for big money. Most get what I call token amounts, especially in the first years of college play. And the sad truth is that of those receiving play-for-pay funds, their numbers drop precipitously as they stay in school. In addition, if their grades fall while working through college as a player, so does the scholarship money.

So the best way to get a college scholarship? Quit soccer or scale way back and put more effort into studying. Many of these scholarships are automatic for the recipient. Athletic money - good athletic money - is hard to come by, and the actual "cost" is very high when one totals the time and money that went into training a girl in select soccer all those years. Even parents whose daughters get full-rides would be shocked to see how much it really cost them as a product of select soccer expenses over time and what the same money could have earned in a 529.

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/international-student-counsel/2014/02/04/take-5-steps-to-play-a-sport-at-a-us-college?src=usn_fb

My daughter has played soccer since 8 years old, started in Arlington, then LH D1/D2 and eventually ECNL.

The best way to get a Scholarship? Get good grades, and do well on the SAT/ACT.

That's it. Don't worry about sports. If they have the grades they can go to school anywhere.

While soccer is fun, keeps our kids fit, and something to be proud of, it has no future for 99% of the girls after college. Get the education first, if they can play soccer then that's icing on the cake.

I spent a small fortune for my kid to play soccer over the years and don't regret it one bit. It was fun, she's a great athlete because of it, but her education is the most important thing. She has been accepted at 12 colleges, but only three or four of them have offered her spots on the soccer team, and two of them are DIII schools that can't offer sports scholarships anyway. She may not even play soccer in college if she chooses a school that doesn't need her on the team. I'm ok with that. All of the schools she has been accepted at have offered anywhere from $80,000 to $90,000 from academic scholarships.

At one of the college combines my daughter attended, a coach from a big DI school said that he had a girl on his team that got a full ride... not from sports, but from scoring 35 on her ACT. It took her five tries to get that score, but with tutoring and hard work she achieved it, and was offered a full scholarship at the school.

Don't expect soccer to get your kid through college. Hard work hitting the books is the better bet.

Great answers justasport and golgolgol. You two should put that up on each age forum at the beginning of each season!

Okay I will actually answer the question. The best way to get a scholorship (FROM SOCCER) is be better than your peers. You can play ECNL, LH, some sunday rec league in the middle of nowhere. Look around at your peers. The more players that are better than you the less money that will be available. Play better than everybody on the coaches team and he will find money for you somehow. Yes it helps to have the grades because coaches like to get you an academic scholorship if they can.

Now that being said, if the only reason you are playing soccer is for the potential scholorship then do yourself a favor and quit now. Just save them money, invest and pay for your own college

golgolgol wrote:My daughter has played soccer since 8 years old, started in Arlington, then LH D1/D2 and eventually ECNL.

The best way to get a Scholarship? Get good grades, and do well on the SAT/ACT.

That's it. Don't worry about sports. If they have the grades they can go to school anywhere.

While soccer is fun, keeps our kids fit, and something to be proud of, it has no future for 99% of the girls after college. Get the education first, if they can play soccer then that's icing on the cake.

I spent a small fortune for my kid to play soccer over the years and don't regret it one bit. It was fun, she's a great athlete because of it, but her education is the most important thing. She has been accepted at 12 colleges, but only three or four of them have offered her spots on the soccer team, and two of them are DIII schools that can't offer sports scholarships anyway. She may not even play soccer in college if she chooses a school that doesn't need her on the team. I'm ok with that. All of the schools she has been accepted at have offered anywhere from $80,000 to $90,000 from academic scholarships.

At one of the college combines my daughter attended, a coach from a big DI school said that he had a girl on his team that got a full ride... not from sports, but from scoring 35 on her ACT. It took her five tries to get that score, but with tutoring and hard work she achieved it, and was offered a full scholarship at the school.

Don't expect soccer to get your kid through college. Hard work hitting the books is the better bet.

I couldn’t agree more with you Gol.  Grades is the key.  I have 2 nieces that quit playing soccer their freshman year to concentrate on school.  One is a freshman now at Barnard in NY, she graduated from Hockaday and received scholarship $$$$ for her grades.   The other is a sophomore at Hockaday and wants to attend USC.   Our family commits so much time to soccer to teach them life lessons, make friends etc…. plus soccer is what our family enjoys doing.  If my daughter or other niece on my 01 team  receive a soccer scholarship great but we are not putting our eggs in one basket.  As director of coaching for our club I’d like to set up small group tutoring to help our players with ACT and school.  My idea is to bring in different tutors once per week on Saturdays during the off season to help kids get what they need.  I’d like to research cost of what good tutors go for, so I can include it into our contracts (club dues).  If anyone has information on where to find GREAT tutors please shoot me an email at kicks01@yahoo.com

Finally, Go gave the right answer in respect to the context of the original posters question. The other answers while somewhat correct do not give a complete answer. To do so would take far to much space and time on this forum. Good grades is just the tip of the spear, making good grades alone does not mean squat. Kids that make good grades are a dime a dozen, the competition is fierce. Out of the millions of kids who apply fo college each year only .03 percent will get a full ride. My two cents, don't give up the dream but at the same time do every thing you can as a parent to help. Do your research and apply for everything, cover all your bases.

yes I do know a kid who got into Yale while his HS valedictorian, Mr SAT did not get on the waiting list. The reality was that Yale has plenty of smart kids but the team needed a goalie. Of course the player did go on an academic and needs based scholorship so he had to have grades. Texas alone had over 70 kids score perfect on the ACT with well over 1000 nation wide. The number of straight A, AP class, valedictorians are too many to count. Don't look at soccer as a scholorship opportunity, but it can certianly be an opportunity to seperate yourself from the rest of the big head kids who think they are smart because they graduated high school. Volunteer, various clubs, etc. Anything that a university feels adds value to their student body. Because just smart is dime a dozen

go99 wrote:yes I do know a kid who got into Yale while his HS valedictorian, Mr SAT did not get on the waiting list. The reality was that Yale has plenty of smart kids but the team needed a goalie. Of course the player did go on an academic and needs based scholorship so he had to have grades. Texas alone had over 70 kids score perfect on the ACT with well over 1000 nation wide. The number of straight A, AP class, valedictorians are too many to count. Don't look at soccer as a scholorship opportunity, but it can certianly be an opportunity to seperate yourself from the rest of the big head kids who think they are smart because they graduated high school. Volunteer, various clubs, etc. Anything that a university feels adds value to their student body. Because just smart is dime a dozen

Amen brother.

Golf.

Blank77 wrote:Golf.

That is what I've heard.

It's true, many times you don't even have to be able to break 100.

Honestly though, it all comes back to your academics, you have to make the grades first and then see about soccer (or any sport).

As far as exposure goes for soccer, playing in ECNL or other showcase events helps to be seen. However if you can play they will find you, whether it's ECNL or HS, just might take a little extra work.

Nowadays you need to be proactive too, start writing the schools you want to recruit you and express your interest. If you have some video of your games, send those along as well. Anything you can do to make it easier for the coaches to see you the better.

Since this is a soccer forum and not an academic forum I think the question relates to soccer scholarships. Obviously there are academic scholarships out there for good grades and high scores regardless of which sport you play. Your guidance counselor at school can help with this. I've seen 75% academic money for 3.9/1200 to some great colleges, without soccer, so that's not a bad way to go.
IMHO & from my experience - (the soccer scholarship standpoint). Most D1 colleges have between 12 and 14 scholarships and real rosters of about 14-16 players (#16+ are basically practice players, they only play 20 games in college). So a coach could give out 75% to 18 players and be good. Or 11 fulls and 4 at 75% which would cover the core. Most coaches only play 14-15 players after all.
Obviously the better you are the more $ you get. But what is 'better'? If you are a nat level player (notice I didnt say team?) you can get a full athletic ride to a top d1 soccer school with a 2.0 and a reasonable SAT (900?). I think Stanford requires a 3.2 or 3.3 and 1000, regardless of what you hear, again that's for the top players. There are probs only 2-5/yr at most in NTX at this level. The next 20-40 NTX ecnl players will get 75-100% to most big 12 and sec level schools, depending on positional need for that yr. If the coach sees you as a top 15 player for them then you will get this money, that's who the scholarships (14 of 'em) are for. Players 40 and down who want more athletic money will have to move down the pecking order in college soccer, or work a combination of academic/athletic to get to the school they want. Kids playing LH D1-2 will be getting most of their interest from smaller d1 and d2-naia schools for money. Many lower level d1 schools have fewer scholarships (as few as 4) as well so they try to split money a lot. That's where you hear coaches talking about starting low and earning money after frosh yr, or getting less than 50%. Most serious D1 programs will not be interested in this LH level. Remember they only recruit 3-6 real players a yr and they have the entire US to pick from. We can debate about going from LH to a top program but these are the real college homes of our LH players: http://girlsclassicleague.com/documents/2012CollegeCommitments.pdf

Blank77 wrote:Golf.

And rowers. Many coaches have money in hand just waiting for athletic females to add to their rowing team. I know a young lady who was a very good soccer player planning to play for SMU, but the first year scholarship money for her was to be quite low (since so much of it is put aside for their junior and senior starters). She happened to meet the rowing coach who identified her very quickly as a top athlete... and got a full ride in her first year! This kid had never rowed a boat in her life. Go figure.

Rowing. Exactly. My niece went 4-years on a ride to a D1 school back East. She'd never rowed a day in her life before college. Met the coach completely by accident at a charity 5k.

Dr Soccer’s post is pretty good, and the numbers don’t always work out as cleanly and consistently as one would hope. For example, not all schools, including D1 schools, are fully funded and therefore don’t have the full allotment of permissible scholarships to parcel out.  For those schools you can reduce the percentages accordingly.  And the landscape changes from year to year for each school depending on how many prior obligations exist from previous years recruiting.  Some players get more $$$ than what their play time/contribution would seem to support which can occur for a number of reasons, the most notable being injury and recovery from injury.  So it is a moving target at best. Good and open communication early in the process with the schools your dd is interested in is important so you can better judge how things are at each of those schools in your recruiting cycle.
You might want to take a look at http://www.scholarshipstats.com/soccer.html to get an idea of how the numbers flow and if an offer is above/below/or average for that school. I can’t vouch for the numbers but when I look at my dd’s college from what I can tell they seem pretty much on target.  Often you will find a “sweet spot” between soccer $$$ and school division level.  D1 is not the end all and be all for good soccer and for good soccer opportunities. Try to put ego and hopefulness to the side and start with academics and work out from there with an open mind.  For most players with college level potential (whatever that may be) there is a school with the best fit academically, with the best scholarship $$$ on a team where the dd can contribute and have a great college soccer experience.  If the goal is D1 or a particular D1 program, unless the dd is a true national top tier type of player there is often a cost to be paid (meaning less or no athletic scholarship $$$$). Even if the dd is a top tier player sometimes the cost is still there for reasons unrelated to talent. So keeping in mind that for each recruiting cycle the coach may be dealing with 4 or 5 partial scholarships in dollars things can get tight.  Where you land is often not where you initially thought once all the factors. Good luck, try to enjoy the process and I hope you end up with as great a situation as my dd did.

just looked at club commitments from PDA, their club has more top commitments than the entire NTX clubs combined:
SYRACUSE
HARVARD
LEHIGH
VANDERBILT
SOUTH CAROLINA
GEORGE WASHINGTON
GEORGETOWN
DUKE
ST. JOSEPH'S
NOTRE DAME
NOTRE DAME
HOLY CROSS
SOUTH CAROLINA
BOSTON COLLEGE
INDIANA
MONMOUTH
VCU
VILLANOVA
RUTGERS
WAGNER
NAVY
GEORGETOWN
DELAWARE
SYRACUSE
RUTGERS
BOSTON COLLEGE
DARTMOUTH
EAST CAROLINA
COLGATE
COLUMBIA
STANFORD
NORTHWESTERN
WAKE FOREST
JAMES MADISON
PURDUE
DUKE
RUTGERS
VIRGINIA
PURDUE
FLORIDA
RUTGERS
KENTUCKY
RUTGERS
Someone needs to get hold of their DOC, if he can develop players at that level in the snow imagine what he/she could do down here!!

Compare to TXNs for same time period (2014-16)
HOUSTON
KENTUCKY
RICE
UALR
ARMY
HOUSTON
CENTRAL ARKANSAS
KANSAS
TEXAS A&M
MERCER
TEXAS A&M
TULSA
BAYLOR
RICE
BAYLOR
OKLAHOMA STATE
TEXAS