First, there are head count sports. These include football, men's and women's basketball, and a couple of other minor sports that VT does not offer. The head count sports have a limit on the number of full schoolarships that can be offered. In football it is 85, men's basketball 13, women's basketball 15. Full scholarships up to the limit is all that can be given. There are no partial schowarships allowed in these sports.

All of the other sports are equivilency sports. Here partial scholarships can and are usually given. For example, wrestling can give the equivilent of 9.9 scholarships. Baseball can give 10.7 equivilent scholarships. Why the odd number? Baseball used to has 13 as their limit and wrestling 11. A few years ago, the NCAA reduced all equivilent scholarship by 10% per sport, hence the odd numbers. Almost never does an athlete in an equivilent sport get a full athletic scholarship. For example, a top level baseball pitcher might get 50% to 60% of a full scholarship. Position players are almost always under 50%. Same goes for all other olympic sports. These partial scholarships are added together until the limit for that sport is reached.

One more thing. For any equivilent sport players with excellent grades, they can qualify for academic money like any other student. The academic money is then stacked on top of the athletic scholarship money. This puts VT at a disadvantage when compared with schools with a large endowment like UVA, UNC, or Duke. The academic money available to athletes with excellent grades gives them a competitive advantags as compared to VT, NC State, and other State universities.

I am familiar with this process because a family member is going through it right now. Leave me any questions that you might have.


[Post edited by HokieJack at 12/08/2021 5:54PM]