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Overall a little
Number of High School Athletes = 1.1 million. Number of High School Senior Athletes = 311,000. Number of College Athletes = 70,000.
Estimated probability of competing in college athletics
According to the estimations, only 0.02 to 0.03 percent of high school players end up playing in the NBA or WNBA. Think about that number. That means out of every 10,000 high school players, only two or three will ever get the chance to play professional basketball! injuries DO happen.
According to the NCAA, there are 351 Division I schools, 308 Division II schools, and 443 Division III schools. To give you a better idea of size and how these divisions compare, about 176,000 student athletes compete at the Division I level.
Do many NCAA student-athletes go on to play professionally? Fewer than 2 percent of NCAA student-athletes go on to be professional athletes. In reality, most student-athletes depend on academics to prepare them for life after college.
There are 1,093,234 high school football players in the United States, and 6.5% of those high school players (or 71,060) will play for the NCAA in college. The drop-off from college to the professional level is more dramatic: only 1.6% of college-level players will get drafted into the NFL.
Division I and II provide $2.7 billion in athletic scholarships annually, awarded to more than 150,000 student-athletes. Only 6% of American high school athletes compete in NCAA intercollegiate athletics, with approximately 2% receiving an athletic scholarship.
The debate about becoming a professional athlete right after high school has been ongoing for decades. In fact, professional leagues like the NBA and NFL prevent it with making athletes be out of high schooll for a specific number of years before they are draft-eligible.
Attrition occurs in college athletics at all levels of the NCAA. No matter how much a recruit falls in love with the school, the sport, the facilities nearly 33% will quit or be asked to leave before they graduate.
Men’s ice hockey has the easiest path with 11.2% going from high school to college. Meanwhile, 8.6% of draft-eligible baseball players are drafted while only 0.9% of women’s basketball players are drafted professionally.
The organization estimates that 55.5 percent of all high school students play a sport. Though sports programs continue to grow, the rate has slowed. Over the past decade, sports participation has increased by roughly 100,000 students per year; the 40,000 increase over the past year is the smallest since the late 1980s.
The well funded NAIA teams are much better than D3 as they should be. NAIA can offer 24 scholarships (Plus as many as they want for non varsity players or redshirts. Plus lower academic standards for athletes in NAIA allows helps NAIA get more D1 ability players.
Overall a little over 7% of high school athletes (about 1 in 13) go on to play a varsity sport in college and less than 2% of high school athletes (1 in 57) go on to play at NCAA Division I schools.
There are currently 358 American colleges and universities classified as Division I for NCAA competition. 49 of the 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, are represented.
Less than eleven in 100, or about 10.5 percent, of NCAA senior male baseball players will get drafted by a Major League Baseball (MLB) team. Approximately one in 200, or approximately 0.5 percent of high school senior boys playing interscholastic baseball will eventually be drafted by an MLB team.
Earn at least a 2.3 GPA in your core courses. Earn an SAT combined score or ACT sum score matching your core-course GPA on the Division I sliding scale, which balances your test score and core-course GPA. If you have a low test score, you need a higher core-course GPA to be eligible.
Division 3 colleges do not provide athletic scholarships per se, but instead provide scholarships based on need and merit, like most other universities. That means that parents, with students interested in pursuing a Division 3 athletic career, should familiarize themselves with how merit-based and need-based aid work.