"What does it take to win a college baseball scholarship?" People ask us that all the time. Of course, people have questions about all kinds of college sport scholarships. You have to do a couple things: (1) you have to actively market yourself to college coaches; (2) you have to be willing to ask the tough questions.

One of the big mistakes high school baseball players make when trying to land college baseball scholarships, is that they assume that baseball scholarships are standard, rather than the exception. The actual picture is very different: only a small percentage of college baseball players get scholarships.

DI men's baseball teams, for example, are only allowed 11.7 total NCAA scholarships. Wondering how someone can get .7 scholarships? It means that men's teams can have the equivalent of 11.7 full rides. If tuition costs $10,000 (wouldn't that be nice), the team can have eleven full rides plus another for $7,000.

The NCAA scholarship limits place a cap on the amount of total baseball scholarships teams can offer. But often, the teams don't even have enough money to fund all of them. So you may very well come across a DI team with only 5 scholarships.

What should you do?

The scarcity of college baseball scholarships means that you have to be very strategic in how you go about positioning yourself to get one. You need to have a well constructed baseball recruitment plan. Here are the two things you absolutely must do to get a scholarship:

1. Promote yourself - To win a college baseball scholarship, you have to have a good self-promotion strategy on how you're going to convince a college coach that he should give you one of his few scholarships.

2. Ask the tough questions - Once a coach knows you, you have to ask The Question: if you go to that college will the coach give you a baseball scholarship?

More interested in softball than baseball? Learn about softball scholarships.