Most parents know that top-notch college football players can get scholarships.

But those are rare. In the 2002 season, two Monte Vista players got college scholarships. In the 2003 season, another two did.

What is more common and less known is the fact that being both a good football player and a good student can get you admitted to many of the top colleges with the highest academic standards.

A good, not great, football player who is also a good student, will typically be recruited by every top academic Division III college he approaches. That list includes:

• MIT
• University of Chicago
• Pomona
• Claremont
• Williams
• Amherst
• Tufts
• Johns Hopkins
• Middlebury
• Bowdoin
• Colby
• Bates
• Wesleyan
• Grinell
• Trinity
• Washington and Lee
• Washington University St. Louis
• Carnegie-Mellon
• Rochester
• Carleton
• Hamilton
• Oberlin
• Macalester
• Occidental
• Willamette

This is also true of Division I-AA which includes the Ivy League. You have to be bigger, faster, and better to be recruited by the Ivy League than by Division III schools.

• Brown
• Columbia
• Cornell
• Dartmouth
• Harvard
• Penn
• Princeton
• Yale

In Division III and Ivy, the coach gives a list of the players he wants to the admissions office. They then admit many of those players at lower, but still high, standards than non-athletes. There is no athletic scholarship. Athletic scholarships are prohibited in Division III and in the Ivy League. But support from the coach enables players who would not be accepted to the college in question purely on grades and test scores to get admitted.

Our defensive coordinator Dan Reed was recruited by Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale and admitted to those three Ivy League colleges for his combination of grades, test scores, and football playing ability. He was also recruited by every high-academic Division III school he contacted. He chose Columbia and played four years there at tailback—earning three varsity letters.

These are non-Ivy, somewhat high-academic-standard Division I-AA schools:

• Colgate
• Georgetown
• Bucknell
• Lehigh
• Davidson

They do offer scholarships, although typically not as generous as the Division I-A scholarships.

There do not appear to be any Division II schools with high academic standards. There are a handful of Division I-A (major football teams) that have relatively high academic standards. These are full scholarship programs. It is very difficult to be both good enough to play for one of these schools and to have the grades and test scores to get admitted to them.

• Stanford
• Northwestern
• Duke
• Rice

Always keep your head up when you hit.