
On the subject of faculty athletics, scholarships play an important position in serving to student-athletes afford their schooling whereas competing at a excessive degree. Nonetheless, not all scholarships are awarded the identical means. The NCAA divides sports activities into two classes: headcount sports activities and equivalency sports activities, with completely different guidelines for a way scholarships are distributed.
Headcount vs. Equivalency Sports activities
In headcount sports activities, equivalent to Division I soccer (FBS), males’s and girls’s basketball, ladies’s gymnastics, tennis, and volleyball, scholarships are awarded on a full-ride foundation. This implies every scholarship should cowl the total value of attendance, and there are strict limits on what number of athletes can obtain one.
In distinction, equivalency sports activities equivalent to baseball, monitor and subject, and soccer enable coaches to divide scholarship funds amongst a number of gamers. Which means as an alternative of receiving a full scholarship, many athletes in these sports activities obtain partial scholarships, which are sometimes mixed with tutorial support or different monetary help.