The Student Athlete (part 6): Building a Balanced College List for Athletics
You’ve probably seen the NCAA's commercial:
“...and just about all of us will be going pro in something other than sports.”
The NCAA goes on to note that “of the student athletes participating in college sports with professional leagues, less than 2% become professional athletes.” Unless you are part of that very small minority of students who will turn pro, receiving an education is your most important outcome as a student athlete.
Also keep in mind that the statistics show - for many valid reasons - that a large percentage of college athletes stop participating in sports during their college career. A Harvard study put this number at 1 in 4, meaning 25% of student athletes will quit their sport during college. Should this happen to you, only the academic parts of college will remain.
Each athlete can and should make an informed decision based on their circumstances, but I would caution most athletes against weighing the athletic portion too heavily.
As the phrase goes - you are a student athlete… emphasis on being a student first. Academics, and academic “fit”, are probably going to be more important in the long run (than athletics).
But how do you build a college list for BOTH the academic and athletics opportunities you want?
In short, where a "typical" college list might have 10-12 schools, you start by building a much broader list of 20+ schools and then use the athletics recruiting process to narrow your choices.
Understanding Your Priorities: Academics vs Athletics
Your first step for finding schools to add to your college list is to assess where sport fits within your priorities. Are you trying to optimise for an athletic experience first and foremost? Do you want to be at a school where there are many other athletes, or few? How many hours per week do you want to spend on your sport? How much say and influence do you want athletics (and coaches) to have over how you live your life as a college student?
There are many levels of competition. Even if you really want to compete in college athletics, you can dial up/down the intensity and time commitment. The NCAA estimates the following typical school sizes, participation rates, and time commitments:
Level of Competition | Avg Undergraduate Enrollment | Students Who Are Athletes | Time Commitments (in season) |
NCAA Division I | 8,449 | 1 in 22 (4.5%) | 33 hrs/week |
NCAA Division II | 2,300 | 1 in 9 (11.1%) | 31 hrs/week |
NCAA Division III | 1,655 | 1 in 6 (16.6%) | 28 hrs/week |
Don’t forget about off-season training commitments, travel requirements (including needing to complete school work on buses and planes), and all the other parts of being an athlete. I remember spending hours and hours, pre and post workouts, with athletic trainers for ice, tape, massage, and other recovery and general health elements.
Building A Balanced List for College Athletics
The second step is to accept that as an athlete your college list is likely going to be larger than the list of your fellow classmates. Where many college-bound students will target 10 or so schools, as an athlete you will likely end up initially managing a list of 20 or more. This is because your matching process includes athletic program fit in addition to all of the usual college fit dimensions. It’s a bit like adding a whole second layer of “admissions” into your college search, because both you and the athletic team need to agree on fit in the same way that you and the college overall need to agree on fit.
Do This First -> Find Interesting Athletics Programs
Start your list by finding interesting schools that could be an athletic fit based on the priority work you did above. An easy way to discover schools that are Division I, II, and III in your sport is to use the NCAA’s website. You want to select the membership directory (meaning, schools that are part of the NCAA) and from there use the filters for sport and division.
You'll want to assess strength of program as part of this process. Be honest when looking at the needs of teams you are interested in, your ability, and your time and effort commitment (e.g. dedication to the sport).
E.g. Do they have an all-American athlete playing your position? Are they overloaded with a certain talent profile already?
It’s also worthwhile to be clear on your ambitions and goals as they relate to the program. Do you want to be one of the top athletes on the team? E.g. A big fish in a small pond? Or, would you like to be surrounded by athletes that are better than you as a way to push yourself and improve?
Unless you are a blue chip athlete, you'll want to aim for a range of strength-of-program options when constructing your college list. For some athletes, this may be across NCAA Divisions, e.g. some Division I schools, some Division II schools, etc… For others, this may require looking at the strength of a program within a division or league, for example looking at Division III schools that are at the top, middle, and bottom of their division.
Google is your friend - research the athletic conferences for the teams you are interested in. Look at their recent recruiting classes and understand how those programs have performed over the years to size up the strength of the program. As an example, there are many Division III men’s swim programs. But, Kenyon College in Ohio has won 34 national championships(!), the most by any collegiate team in any NCAA division. And only five schools - Kenyon, Denison, Emory, Johns Hopkins, and St. Lawrence - have won a men’s swimming championship in NCAA Division III in the last 45 years! There’s a marked difference in strength of program, and thus expectations for athletes, at these five schools vs your “typical” Division III swim program.
Do This Second -> Overlay Academics and Other Important "Fit" Elements
Once you've seeded your list with potential athletics programs, you’ll need to complete all of the usual college search mechanics and then use those dimensions to narrow the field.
Do you want to attend a large school or a small school? What are you thinking about for major, and do the schools you’re considering have a strong program? What about cost / scholarships? What about location? Etc…
One of my favourite ways to capture "fit" criteria is by using the free college match worksheet available at Dr. Antonoff's website (he wrote the book on college matching, literally).
It is in this step that you'll want to pay particular attention to academics, the primary reason you’re attending college. Coaches coach. Admissions officers admit students. The former has some sway with the latter, but in the end - it is who you are as a student that is going to gain you admission to a university. And it is who you are a student that will ultimately determine your success in school - and graduation. So, you’ll want to have a balanced list from an academics / admissions perspective too.
I’ve been using a simple matrix to help students self-assess (rank) their college list across four dimensions: academic fit, social fit, financial fit, and admissions fit. For student athletes, I've added an additional dimension to capture athletics fit. One reason I like this framing is that it puts the athletic dimension into equal footing with other common college search criteria. For the majority of student athletes, athletics is only one important element of how they will choose a college or university.
Putting It All Together - A Blueprint
This is one step-by-step way you might choose to go about building your initial list of colleges and universities as a student-athlete:
Write down your list of priorities, both athletics AND academic / fit.
Research athletics programs, based on your priorities. Use the NCAA site, each college's athletics website, and Google to look up athletics conferences and teams. Aim for a range of strength-of-programs, from schools where you would be one of the strongest athletes to schools that would be more of a "reach".
Create a spreadsheet, and add these programs to make an initial college list. 40-50 schools is probably a good number to shoot for. Include a few data points about each school like name, location, and a bit of info on the athletics program so you don't have to constantly look up the details.
Then, research these same schools for academic / other fit priorities. Use sites like collegedata.com and Niche for this. Add some of the important academic and fit info as columns to your spreadsheet as well. You are looking for a range of strength-of-programs, from schools where you would be a strong academic applicant to schools that would be more of a "reach".
Use the scoring matrix I mentioned above to help you sort / rank the list. You're aiming for about 20+ programs.
Micro-adjust to ensure your list remains balanced. You want a range of strength-of-programs in both athletics AND academics (incl likelihood of admission). If you don't have balance, repeat steps 1-5 to add a few more schools to your list.
Last, now that you have a working list, reach out to those coaches / programs and use the athletics recruiting process to help you refine further.
The last step will be pretty straightforward, but may take many months. Some programs will turn out to be a really good fit and you're going to get good engagement from the coach / program and continue to like the college overall. Obviously, keep these. And some programs will turn out to not be a very good fit for reasons (athletics dept doesn't get back to you or coach isn't good fit, your GPA will make admissions too difficult, you don't like the location, might not receive a scholarship, etc...) and you'll drop them.
In any case, by the time you get to fall of senior year (when you'll actually be completing applications in fall senior year) you'll likely be down to just a handful of schools - probably 10 or less - for which you will actually need to apply. So, don't be overwhelmed by the initial size of your college list. Trust the process :).
