Did the math on your scholarship workout in your favor?

It isn't a job.

Best decision in life was to run in college. Graduated with zero debt, a career, and a lifetime of experiences.

If you do it for the money then you lost the plot entirely.

Me too. I have gone from being in the bottom 1% to the top 1% in terms of income.
best time of my life was running in college

That is not the question. You are saying your DEGREE paid off. I assume you would have gone to college whether you ran or not. If you received a few thousand dollars per semester that's great but..

If you worked minimum wage at a part time job at 30 hours you'd bring in about 10k in a year.

With all due respect neither of you answered the question and I assume that means the answer is 'no.'

No doubt I'd have been better off financially working a part time job instead of running track in college. I'm glad I didn't. I've had non-stop opportunities to work since graduation. I've never again had the opportunity to run college track. Flipping burgers wouldn't have provided the life-long friendships and memories. And I still graduated debt free. Broke, but debt free.

I got a 1/10th of a full ride at a junior college. We consistently did 100+ MPW, I got sick and ran slower than I had run in high school. Lost the scholarship after 1 year, trained myself from then on and improved my times dramatically. So, no, the ROI for the scholarship was negative. Learning how to train myself was, as they say, priceless.

You are correct. There are 50 guys on a team and the scholarships total about $600k which means the average per guy is $12k.

Okay, maybe here is the false assumption: I may not have gone to college if I didn't run. I am first-generation and would have probably gone straight to working if I wasn't offered a couple of full rides. And further point, my degree was useless, but my success and connections from running got me to where I am today.

Best wishes.

Tuition covered, was about $10k at the time per year, I paid for books and 'room and board'. So $40k over 4 years. Also got roughly $1k of cash per diem per year, so say $44k. Then a lot of free clothes and shoes, and free trips across the country but I won't count that in the financials. So $11k per year. I worked a summer job that took away my standard taxes deduction, so this $11k post tax savings I would have had to make about $13k per year more from working to make my bank account have the same amount of money. Let's be generous and say I'd make $10 per hour in whatever part time job I did in college. I'd have to work 1,300 hours in the 9 months of being on campus (I worked off campus during summer break between seasons). That's 144 hours per month, or about 36 hours per week. Was I spending 36 hours per week at practice? Not even close

Yep- I was an average collegiate runner and earned an average athletic scholarship. Academics were always bigger to me and between the two scholarships, I graduated debt free and with a secured job. Probably could have bargained for more but it is what it is!

Could someone on a any type scholarship earn more money working a job vs running for a university? And you only want to take into consideration the actual amount of money... nothing else?

Seems like you know the answer to that already and have some sort of hidden point you are attempting to make.

you are not in the top 1%

Better question for the ball sports, particularly soccer and baseball, and other highly coached sports like gymnastics, and the money spent on youth leagues, private coaches, travel, etc. Does that pre-collegiate "investment" yield a positive return in scholarship money, or would that return be better if the money was invested in a 529 account?

Investment? It is life. It builds memories.

"Scholarships" are a scam. Small private schools with astronomical costs of tuition offer "scholarship" that only cover a small fraction of a very big number.

Basically, these schools mark up the tuition and then offer a slight discount on tuition to "athletes". It's a money making scheme.

Hey kid, here is a $5K scholarship to come run for us. Now you owe us the other $45K. Pay up fool.

I likely would not have gone to college but for the athletic scholarship, at least not without significant delay. My father was wealthy, but abandoned the family (thankfully, as he was terribly abusive; he was well known in track circles and of course while many knew about it no adults back then were there to help). There was no way to qualify for aid - as I found out when I was accepted to several Ivy League schools. Father's income loomed large, and he wouldn't have completed a financial aid form under any circumstance. He hated being a father (we got in the way given his penchant for much younger women) and to him I was a fat, dumb and lazy loser. While successful both professionally and academically and easily in the so-called 1 percent, I never became more than a big time loser to him and he recently died without contacting me for decades. No joy in that story. Junior college perhaps was an option but there was no public transportation back then to the school, and my kind mother was losing her home and hospitalized. I should have looked at it more seriously than I did, however. I looked at West Point too and was recruited vigorously there, but I had doubts about my ability to handle the lifestyle and at that time there was a limited number of majors, with the curriculum wrapped around general engineering (not my thing). I did receive a 75% scholarship at one of the best schools that offer athletic scholarships, so I have no complaints. Division 1 running while working jobs all of the time to stay afloat (I had to feed and house myself over the summer and pay for food and travel during the school year) was not easy, and I was not set up to maximize either track or academics. In retrospect I should have taken one of the Big Ten full ride offers - I was immature and was swayed by the fact that my college had small classes which I believed kept me from cutting class (to be fair a wise assumption in retrospect, being 18 with no family structure or support). Again, I went on to a top grad school where I did well beyond any expectations, so I have no complaints. You take what life gives you. I was a very good high school runner, but there are no 75% scholarships at places like I went to today. So while it was a struggle, I am incredibly grateful. My daughters went to the best schools in the nation, of course, with everything paid for with no debt and a car and vacations and the like, along with tuition paid for grad school. I wouldn't want it any other way as paying it forward exorcised a lot of demons. So again very, very lucky.

Who you hang out with is important. My aunt got us in an excellent school district where were two time state champions (never will happen again), and I had a cadre of friends - true friends - both women and men who really stayed after me about staying above water academically. None of them were athletes. Back then the high schools tracked academically, so I was fortunate enough to be in the top track and at the same time have friends who really stayed on me about not wasting academic opportunity, as I was always inclined to do. One of them went with me to my college and she was essentially a sister to me and would go over my academic schedule with me. Again, this factor in hindsight looms as the best thing that ever happened to me.

By the way, don't take this rags to riches story that seriously. There are others on this board with far more impressive stories, and my respect for those who have dug out of the trenches is significant. Those on this board know to what I speak, and to a one will say running gave them the discipline to get through. In the end I did what I wanted to do. And I was no victim either. I had lots of freedom since age 16 and am thankful I had people in my life who kept me from abusing it. My only regret is in not being able to do more for my late mother, who was an incredibly kind person and who had a rough life which was not deserved.

Football and basketball are fully so there is no way they could earn more. A full ride to an expensive school is $80k per year and an average school is $40k per year.