I’m calling BS on needing 410 mile to be recruited D1. How many 410 milers per year and how many average spots go to milers?

Last year, in the 1600m, 27 PRs were 4:10 and under, and 380 were 4:20 and under amongst graduating seniors.

Throw in another 50 foreigners at 4:10.

People just do not realize how many poor-to-terrible D1 programs there are...schools that sponsor men's xc and (perhaps) track, just so they can meet the NCAA's minimum number of sports offered. These are often (not always) colleges and universities that are focused on their men's basketball programs.

At these institutions there are few or no athletic scholarships for runners. The "12.6 scholarships" that people have been talking about is the maximum allowable for track and cross-country; a school is not required to offer any athletic scholarships in the sports, and many do not.

At these bottom-end programs, a guy who ran 4:40 in high school might be welcomed. That's not always true; there are sometimes serious squad-size limitations, especially for men, but if there's roster space available a 4:40 incoming guy could immediately be one of the better runners on the squad.

I suppose the question hinges on what you mean by "recruited."

Will any D1 be seeking out a 4:40 kid? No--at least not for athletics reasons. (I was a terrible runner but was still recruited by a D1--for academics, though.)

Will some of them follow up if such a kid indicates interest? ABSOLUTELY. If that's what you mean by "recruited," then you're right, a 4:10 is not required; you can be a half-minute slower and still get interest.

If it's important to you to be able to say "I was a Division I runner!" then there's a place for you somewhere. There are periodically discussion threads about the worst D1 programs--places where top-seven guys in cross-country can't run six-minute miles for 8,000m. I did a quickie search and this was the first one I found:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3405200&page=1

As a follow-up, here are the results for the search I made--lotsa threads on the worst D1 programs: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-8687477133452597%3Ay2r7jtxdt15&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=which+d1+has+the+worst+program%3F&sa=Search#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=which%20d1%20has%20the%20worst%20program%3F&gsc.page=1

Last year there was 17 high school seniors who ran sub 4:10 and about 314 seniors who ran sub 4:20

I was 4:27 miler 9:26 2 mile and got partial scholarship to D1 ended up being full by the time I left

What college was this? Help the kids looking for a scholarship.

Supply and demand says it is not possible. I know many kids who would love to get s few bucks for running 4:20 and can’t even find a D1 school that will allow them on the team.

No way jose wrote:

I know many kids who would love to get s few bucks for running 4:20 and can’t even find a D1 school that will allow them on the team.

They're not looking hard enough. They might not get athletic aid, but there are scores of D1 schools that would allow them on the team.

Maybe for money

Ummm...no wrote:

"You are correct. A TON of D1 schools will recruit you with slower than 4:10. In fact, the vast majority will."

Not to a top track/xc school with a full scholarship. Maybe partial scholarship or none. Recruited vs. recruited with full scholarship are vastly different.

Did I say a top track school with a full scholarship? Do you know how many D1 colleges there are in this country?

I will tell you right now that if you are a half-way decent student (3.6 GPA and 1300 SAT) with AP and honors classes in there, you run 4:10 or 9:12 and can do decently well in cross too, and your family income is $100,000 a year, Davidson will take you and give you enough scholarship money that you will pay nothing to go there, and none of that is due to academic scholarship money. All based on need and athletic scholarship money.

Just depends what school you want to go to. Usually about 4:15 will get you some money (not a full ride) at a mid-level to lower tier D1 program (and it has been this way for about forty years). A top tier program will want 4:08 or better. Any slower than that and they will usually go the foreign route. The biggest difference between competing in high school and competing in college is that in high school you compete against the kids in your state (a number of which are terrible), while in college you are competing against five years of kids who were the best in their state plus a number of foreigners who were some of the best in their respective country. If you look at the Olympics, 70% of the athletes that competed in the NCAAs ran for a country other than the US at the Olympics.

Ivyguy,

Thanks for stating this. The misconceptions about Ivy league schools and income is atrocious. My single mother paid 2,000 a year for me to go to Penn in the 90s. If I had elected to go to my state school, University of Florida, they wouldn’t have made her pay close to 10,000 ( 1/3 of her income!)

Correction to above post- University of Florida WOULD (not wouldn’t) have made her pay 10,000 per year

I swam 4 years at an Ivy and qualified for O trials after my senior year in high school, and again after graduating from the Ivy. I had good grades and test scores and got a full ride academic scholarship all 4 years I was there.

Not many sub 4:10 milers wrote:

Last year there was 17 high school seniors who ran sub 4:10 and about 314 seniors who ran sub 4:20

Doesn't matter.

No school recruits based on senior times. Too late. Recruiters are eyeing junior and sophomore times in track. Senior fall xc season matters, but not so much for mid d athletes.

Also, for potential milers, fast 400 & 800 times to go along with fast mile time is more impressive than just a slightly faster mile time. 2 mile times mean a lot for recruiters but more so on the xc spectrum than mid d. If you are hoping for mile times to get recruited for mid d, then 800 is way more important. Plus winning results matter a lot, especially championships.

Olympic trials., What is your name? Notice how all of the naysayers won’t give the name of the schools that supposedly give scholarships to 4:14 kids or 4:20 kids. The info would help the rest of us. They certainly won’t provide their name or the name of an athlete that received one either. Coaches are reading this right now. Wouldn’t they want to get their scholarship name out there for recruiting if they are interested in a 4;20 kid? They would be bombarded with recruits.

That’s because most of what’s posted here is not true. The Ivies don’t give scholarships. Anybody reading this can go to their websites and easily research it or they can just call them and they will inform you. If somebody didn’t pay to go to an Ivy, it is because their parents earned below $75k. Those are facts.

Here is a list of schools where athletes contacted and received nonschokarship offers after running in the 4:15/9:15 range and one even had a perfectb36 ACT on top of that: Ohio St, Georgetown, Villanova, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Michigan st, Notre Dame, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Iowa, Iowa st, Arkansas, and Texas A&M, and Duke. Add to that all of the Ivies. Now, why doesn’t everyone provide the names of schools that have provided scholarships to these types of athletes?

By continuing these threads and misleading people, many parents have to find out the hard way that their son will not be getting a scholarship

It's February.

If you're a guy and haven't been invited for official visits you are not being recruited and should not expect $$$, period. The many parents "finding out the hard way " are delusional to believe otherwise. Now, roster spots, maybe but if they're not tracking you down, doubtful.

Let's look at some numbers:

On any given year, 600 boys can run sub 4:20.00 in the 1600m (milesplit search).

Of those 600 boys, 350 of them are seniors.

There are 780 NCAA institutions that offer outdoor track as a certified sport (this is NOT including NAIA and Junior College).

At any given four year cycle, there could be (350 x 4 = 1400) former sub 4:20 HS boys that exist within the collegiate ranks.

Given an even distribution, that about 2 sub 4:20 HS boys per NCAA program

This is also assuming that all 780 programs offer scholarship (they don't). 294 of the programs are D3 and even though they do not offer athletic scholarship, how many sub 4:20 boys choose to attend D3 . . .

That leaves 486 programs that could offer scholarship to a sub 4:20 HS boy.

That's almost 3 sub 4:20 HS boys per potential scholarship program.

How many of those 486 D1 and D2 programs actually put money into middle distance?

The trend should show you that 4:20 wouldn't make it into the top 3 mile / 1500m runners at any given point on any given program.

Find a lower tier program and leverage your ability to make an impact at the conference level or impress the coach at a higher tier program hoping to walk on and impress so much they'll offer you scholarship later on.

SUMMARY: 4:20 isn't as good as you think