How important is the amount of the scholarship offer to your decision to sign with a particular school?

Question:
How important is the amount of the scholarship offer to your decision to sign with a particular school?

Choices:
Take the top $ - bottom line
Take the top $ - but from a narrowed pool of schools
Take the school - even if their offer is 3rd or 4th best offer
Take the school - as long as there is some small $ offer
Take the school no matter what

 

This is a very hard question to answer. Everyone always dreams that their kid's education (no matter what sport) will be subsidized with scholarship $$ (athletic/academic). Naturally your first instinct is to go with what will cost you less in the long run.
We were fortunate that our son had many opportunities, some of them large offers. One school's offer with his earned state money for grades, he would have had nice spending money every semester.
We have learned so much from this experience. The best advice I could give is to know where you are going,learn everything about the school from the academic instructors to who will be your team mates, everything, everything, everything. Because no amount of money given to you will guarantee that you will be happy. Knowing what we do now and how we feel about everything where he will go, well, he would have gone even if he had to be a walk on!

I have a question regarding the college recruiting process. Does it matter to a college coach if you have a 3.0 with 'regular' courses or honors? Here in Fla. we have the Bright Futures state scholarship program. A kid can qualify for 75% tuition to a state school with a 3.0 and 970 SAT. Therefore a state school can get a kid for 25% and he is covered 100%. So I wonder if the coach cares at all if your 3.0 was in basic education classes or if you eeked out a 3.0 in honors courses? I really appreciate any input from someone who was been there. Thanks

JohnnieM,
Coaches usually gather enough information to determine whether a player can handle the pressure of attending school and being in their program, regardless of courses taken in HS. Remember you must also qualify for NCAA so make sure you are on the right track as far as that is concerned. Just because you qualify for Bright Futures not not mean that you qualify to play baseball.
However, on the upside,it does help the coach to manage those 11.7 scholarships a lot easier than if there were no state money available.

JohnnieM....The 3.0 average you are talking about is a "weighted" GPA. If they are general courses then it will remain 3.0 but if they are honors courses then the GPA will increase according to how many courses are honors and the grade in each course. To get 100% tuition one must have a 3.50
(weighted)GPA and score at least 1270 on the SAT or 28 ACT.
Also, must have 75 hours of community service. There are also
other ways to get this Scholarship one of them being a National Hispanic Scholar. Go to:

"www.myfloridaeducation.com/brfuture to learn more.

Good luck/study hard!!

Moc1

Moc,
I think he meant with his grades he qualifies for 75% and the school would pay the 25%, making that 100%.