Customer Reviews

Student Athlete Handbook for the 21st Century: A guide to recruiting, scholarships, and prepping for college

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book provided us with an excellent (and accurate) depiction of what a student athelete should be aware of as he or she gets ready for college. Other books we read (or tried to read) were so sterile and/or out of date they didn't provide any sort of relevant guidance. I _highly_ recommend Grimes' book, even for students who aren't fully sure they want to pursue a college career. You might just find it helps them realize college isn't a bad idea and isn't too hard to do and play sports at the same time!

The Student Athlete Handbook for the 21st Century offers concise, practical advice to student athletes making the transition from high school to college.

From selecting a college, to contacting coaches, to succeeding during the all-important freshman year, the book provides a guide through a sometimes daunting process.

It's also an ideal resource for a younger athlete, perhaps a high school freshman or sophomore, who hopes to participate in college athletics and wants to get a head start.

The positive features are, this is a short, visually-simple book, and therefore ideal for a short-attention span teenager who is pursuing this information for the first time. The question is, whether it is worth spending money to get this delivered in this short format. I would say definitely not, at $[...], and your choice, at perhaps $[...] (once available by re-sellers).
Many of the basics related to sports and college are here, and the information appears to be accurate. There are a few good starter template letters.
However, for 90 pages, this is "ultra-skimpy". This is not suitable for a parent, for example, who has already perused the ncaa.org website, or a student-athlete with a well-informed, helpful coach or college advisor. The font is big, and LARGE sections of pages are taken up with apt, but well-worn, inspirational quotes by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Sophocles. Frankly, more contemporary and sports-oriented quotes are readily available, and there really isn't a need to take up 1 of the 90 pgs with a list of the "inspirations". Someone got lazy with quote-finder here.
This digression on the quotes serves to illustrate what you can't know from the Amazon website, which is how simplistic and scanty the total content is. It is GOOD content, but should really be a cheap pamphlet, or possibly a school purchase available for students to pick up off a table, look through, and put down in a short time. There are very few (if any?) solid insights or anecdotal information such as you would get from college coaches themselves, or long-time professionals within the college-counseling field. Would not recommend to an individual - all the same info available readily for free or in more comprehensive publications.

This book was great. It had all the information in one place and was a quick, accessible read. It filled in the gaps in my knowledge about how my kid should approach coaches and how we should make a good media guide and video, and it gave me tips from an insider perspective. It even gives examples of professional sample letters for students to submit to prospective coaches. It's also a book that could help the whole team (we found lots of info to share and pass on) and something our busy kids would still sit down and read (and I can't imagine my son plunking down with one of those huge books and doing that). This book had everything I needed to know in one place. I could have googled for weeks for information and still not found everything in this book (I tried!). The price was right and I checked it out ahead of time with the search inside to get a feel for what it was like. It provided everything it promised.

I would recommend that you spend a little time Googling instead of wasting your money on this book. It is WAY overpriced. Technically it's 108 pages, but if the layout were professional (i.e., using a normal-sized font, without the random textboxes (some of which are missing text as they stop mid-thought) or quotations in huge fonts) this book could easily be 50 pages - and most information is on the Internet.