If you want your child to snag an athletic scholarship, there’s no better sport than women’s rowing.
Last year The New York Times completed an exhaustive research on the odds of winning an athletic scholarship and women’s rowing topped the list.
According to the newspaper, 2,359 teenage girls row in high school and 2,295 girls receive rowing scholarships. EXCELLENT ODDS!
Now compare those stats to the odds of getting a baseball scholarship. More than 451,000 teenager boys compete on the baseball field, but only 12,272 win a scholarship.
The odds are even worse for boy’s basketball. More than 540,000 boys play basketball in high school, but a measly 7,545 receive a scholarship.
The teenager rower is in an even better position to collect cash from colleges because of four other factors:
1. Geographic diversity. Our rower lives in Guam. She’ll be the token Guamanian at just about any school she would attend.
2. Cultural diversity. She’s Guamanian. Schools are always reaching out to promising minority students.
3. She’s smart and she loves math and science. There could be a stampede for this girl.
4. She’s a twin. When siblings are in college at the same time, the amount of money a family is expected to contribute for their education is dramatically reduced.
I wish she was my kid.
Lynn O’Shaughnessy, who last competed athletically at the annual powder puff football game at her all-girls’ high school, is the author of The College Solution and she also write a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com.