Revealing how scholarships work with D1 baseball

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. So this is an exciting time of year because a lot of offers are going out to student athletes. A lot of commitments are happening. A lot of college coaches are bringing student athletes onto their campus for official visits or unofficial visits, depending on where you're at in the recruiting process, what year you are. And those athletic scholarships are being offered, those academic scholarships are being offered, Preferred walk on slots are being offered, walk on slots are being offered. All of these different things from Division 1 to Division 2 to Division 3, NAI and JUCO as well. We're going to take a look a little bit about and talk about the athletic scholarship side because there's some confusion and rightfully so. It's a lot going on with all of the NCAA and how these scholarships work because it's different from football and basketball. Some of you might know that. And football and basketball, they pretty much get full rides to most of their athletes on their roster. Not technically everybody is, but it's like 80 to 90% of the guys on their roster, especially football, are on full scholarships. It does not work like that in baseball for Division 1 and then Division 2, Division 3, we're going to talk all about those as well. So I wanted to kind of clear up this. So you guys are just, hey, more knowledge for you so you could be strategic how you go about this process. But before we get into that, my name is Alex Swenson. If you're new to my channel, I'm A former Division 1 college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is I help talented high school baseball athletes go through this college recruiting process, help them find the best college fit. But if you get anything from this video, please smash that thumbs up that like button right down here and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video on the recruiting process and just helping you get better on and off this field. So let's dive into this. We're going to start with Division 1 right away. So some of you might or might not know, Division 1 schools have 11.7 scholarships that they can divvy out amongst 27 of their players out of the 35. So eight of those players are going to be one. Walk ons are preferred. Walk ons meaning they're not going to be on an athletic scholarship, but 27 of the guys can be on athletics. Now the thing is, not all schools have 11.7 scholarships. They're not, as we call it, fully funded. Most Power 5 schools are. Those are the schools in the SEC, the ACC, the PAC 12, all those big conferences, they are fully funded now mid major programs, depending on how much money is allocated to baseball by the administration and by the school they might be on, they might have 10 scholarships, they might have eight scholarships, they might have five, four, three. And they have to divvy out those. The average scholarship is starting to change because now you can be. It used to be in the past you had to give a minimum of 25% scholarship at the Division 1 level. That rule just recently changed. It was like over less than a year ago. And you can divvy it out however you want. You can get 5%, 10%, 15%, 20, 25, 30, 45, 50. So I've never seen a full athletic scholarship in baseball. It's just not worth it. Even on 11.7, the highest I've ever seen an athletic scholarship on baseball is like 80%. Now there's definitely ways you could get to a full athletic scholarship or full scholarship with stacking an athletic and an academic scholarship. So a lot of Division 1 schools, not all have academic scholarships. And usually you can get more money from an academic scholarship than you can from an athletic scholarship. And hey, a scholarship is a scholarship, all right? Whether it's athletic or academic, money is money. Especially how expensive college schools are these days, man, that's why it's just so important to stay focused in the classroom and really do a good job in high school. From a grade point average and working on your test scores as well, this can really add a lot of money to or save money from that aspect of it from a college level because there's a lot of academic scholarships all around. Now a couple caveats to this from the Division 1 level. The Ivy Leagues and the Patriot League do not have any athletic scholarships and most of them are very, they don't have academic scholarships. So what you will want to go is like try to find merit scholarships, see what you can apply for through those certain merit scholarships to get some money from that aspect of it. So that's Division one. And so basically there is just not a lot of money in scholarships from a college baseball perspective. But anything can help. And that's why doing again, good grades and athletic, you can stack them. I had a stack, I was able to stack an athletic and academic scholarship when I was in school and that helped so much because I went to a small private school, Jacksonville University and played there. So I was able to stack that. Now let's dive into Division 2. Division 2 has nine scholarships that they can divvy out amongst their roster. Now, they're not limited to how many they can send out. And, you know, they will do similar. 10%, 15%, 20%, 30%. And then, you know, depending on the school, they can have academic scholarships as well. If you apply for that and you meet the standards of what they're looking for. And then we get to Division 3. Not a lot of people know this. Some do, but Division 3 does not have any athletic scholarships. They're very academic strong in Division 3 that you can get a lot of money from an academic standard. You can usually get, again, more money academically than you can athletically. That's a great route to go. And again, I mean, I've seen scholarships, guys I've worked with in the past, upwards of $30,000 in academic money a year. $30,000. It's $120,000 over the lifespan of their college, which, you know, for that instance was like 70, 80% of the tuition. So academic money is real, man, and money is money. And that can help the program, too, going back to kind of Division one, if you're a really good student, a really good athlete, and the coaches see that, obviously they can give you a lot of academic money and save a little bit of their athletic money. They can give you maybe some athletic to stack, depending on their school stacking, but they can save some room for other players that might not be as academically strong with you. And they can put some money over there which can just again, be super helpful. Now let's get into NAIA. All right, so NAIA, there's 12 academic scholarships they can divvy out amongst their team. So they have that aspect of it and something that definitely to consider in naia, man. It's. It's a. It's getting better and better every single year. All of these levels are getting better and better. And NAIA school just recently beat, this past year, beat a Power 5 school, which was just amazing. You know, Power 5 school is one of the best. The top tiers of college baseball. And then NAIA school, smaller school beat them. So it just, it's. It's pretty incredible from that side, that standpoint. Let's talk about junior college. So junior college is kind of like there's tiers in junior college similar to D1, D2, D3, the divisions. Well, there's D1, D2, D 3, junior colleges. And depending on if they're fully funded, junior college can have up to 24 scholarships. Okay. That they can divvy out if they meet and are fully funded. To 24, Division 1 and Division 2 of those junior college and then Division 3 doesn't have any scholarship money from that standpoint. But definitely look into the academic side. Anytime you're looking at these schools from the athletic or, excuse me, academic scholarships and check out merit scholarships, you guys can go to Google and check out merit scholarships and see what you possibly apply for, can apply for. That can help you save, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars at that stem point. So hopefully that cleared up things and just you have a better idea of how all of this works. And you know, sometimes people are shocked if, like, if they get an athletic scholarship and it's only 20, 20% or 25% or whatever, they're just like, wait, you know, I'm not getting a full boat. No, doesn't work like that. Not in baseball, but possibly, hopefully down the future, all baseball players will be on a full ride, you know, hopefully. I'm hoping and praying that that happens because that can give a lot of relief to a lot of families and a lot of athletes from a payment standpoint. But hopefully you got something from this video. If you have any questions or you want to hear any topics, please comment down below. I always read all of them and reply back to everybody, so we'd love to hear that. And I will see you in the next video. All right, have a good day.