Nearly 8 million students currently participate in high school athletics in the United States. Only about 500,000 compete as NCAA athletes, and a select few within each sport move on to compete at the professional or Olympic level.
 
You have made it here because of your hard work, but the pressures of being a college athlete will be great. In an NCAA Goals Study conducted in 2019, up to 70% of the student-athletes polled told us their family expected them to be a college athlete growing up, and up to 30% said families expected them to become a professional or an Olympian. Some students revealed their family even relocated with the hopes of increasing the chances of them becoming a college athlete.

While there will continue to be expectations placed on you during your college journey, both in the classroom and in competition, your status as a student-athlete positions you to achieve a higher level of success than your peers on campus who don’t play sports. In fact, the likelihood of an NCAA athlete earning a college degree is significantly greater; graduation rates are 90% in Division I, 74% in Division II and 87% in Division III, according to data released in 2020.
 
For more on the research mentioned above, click here.