What Michael Phelps thinks before he steps on the block: "If you know, you know."

The NCAA Division I Men's and Women's qualifying times for 2014 were:

(Source)

But let's take a pause.

Why don't we pick an event that "everyone" swims: the 200 freestyle. The capital A standard is a 1:33.6. If you're within a second or two of that time, your senior year of high school, congratulations—college won't cost you a dime. If you can swim the 200 free in 1:35+ then you can likely swim a lot of other events insanely fast, help out on the relays, and enjoy life as BMOC.

If your times are closer to the B standard, it means that you're just qualifying to compete in the NCAA championships. While achieving a standard is nice, it does nothing for the school in terms of scoring points. To score points—the big ones—you need to be a finalist in a given event. That is, if a coach thinks you can score in the top 8 at NCAA championships, that coach will likely offer you a wonderful ride.

Swimming: Keeping the funny bathing suit business alive since humans first encountered water.

You were likely blessed you with a thin, long body, light, flat bones, extreme flexibility, an oversized heart and lung system, and the ability to efficiently convert oxygen into the bloodstream. Oh, and by the way, you have a ludicrous ability to train your body far beyond what it evolved to do.

So how do you get to be a scared antelope in the water?

Well, depending on the level of sadism your coach has, you'll either train twice a day for a couple of hours each, or you will train three times a day for a couple of hours each, plus weights, plus dry-land cardio work. The best swimmers who train in the grueling lane train 45+ hours a week with unapologetic violations of whatever other scheduling conflicts life could offer.

D-I schools only represent about a third of all NCAA swimming programs (source). Even at the D-II and D-III levels, scholarships are scarce. 

Similar to track or cross-country, success in swimming boils down to one thing: speed. Men who can swim the 100-yard freestyle in under 43 seconds and women who can swim it in under 48 seconds could have a scholarship to a Division-I school in their future (source). Men with times under 46 seconds (source) and women with times under 53 seconds have a shot at making a D-II team (source).

If your times aren’t competitive, you might want to consider swimming for recreation only. We hate to break it to you, but it’s possible your slick moves just aren’t slick enough to earn you scholarship money. Being the greatest swimmer in the history of Montana just doesn't mean much against the best fish from Florida, Texas, and California. Oh, and by the way, a very large percentage of today's best college swimmers—10%? 20%? 30%?—aren't American. U.S. schools recruit actively in Russia, China, Europe, Australia, and Latin America and unapologetically take scholarship slots for the best athletes around the world.

Swimming is an equivalency sport, which means that the program is given a set amount of scholarship moolah that each college coach then divides between team members. While some athletes get full rides, most receive only partial scholarships (source). And some are often walk-ons. 

Walk-ons don't receive any scholarship money, or any other perks—training table, injury rehab, other healthcare services, tutoring. Like we said: swim really fast, or you get (almost) nothing for free.

It's not as if the competition calms down once you get into the pool at your Div-I college, either. In order to hang in a NCAA program, swimmers truly have to take their game (er, swim) to a whole 'nother level. While we'd like to let you believe that you can do anything you put your mind to, you'll have to use a few more muscles—actually, all of the muscles in your body—if you want to succeed in collegiate swimming.

Obvious point here: swimmers have to be willing to work hard to improve their times. Are you a top high school athlete? If so, congratulations. Now brace yourself to compete against entire teams of top athletes just like you.

Of course, in addition to swimming at the speed of light, NCAA swimmers must also balance their training in the pool with their "training" in the classroom. Studying—it's what you'll be doing instead of sleeping. 

After all, college acceptance is at least partially based on your performance as a student. And again, once you're accepted to a school, the pressure doesn't stop there. All NCAA athletes have to maintain a certain academic standard. Plus, since you’ll likely be receiving only a partial scholarship or none at all (unless you’re the next Michael Phelps), you have to be concerned about life after college.

That brings us to another question: what are your post-grad plans?

Unless you're a top athlete in a stellar D-I program, you'll have to do something other than swim. And those destined-to-be-pros are like .001% of .001% of aspiring swimmers. (Note: not an actual statistic. We’re trying to make a point here, Shmoopers. Still, we’re probably not that far off.) Many of you might aspire to become coaches, though there's stiff competition for those jobs.

And the odds of even making any NCAA swimming and diving team out of high school are pretty low. Those odds are about 7.9% for men and 8.3% for women, but that includes D-I, D-II, and D-III teams, and slots on both swimming and diving rosters (source). So, the reality isn't even as pretty as that. 

We'd like to continue our line of questioning now. Do you truly like training during every possible non-academic hour to prepare for each race?

Do you deal well with repeated physical, mental, and emotional stress, not to mention crushing disappointment?

Look, if it's your dream to swim at a collegiate level, then we want to help you. We just want to provide you with several stone-cold reality checks along the way. Real friends don’t let their buddies throw their futures away…into overly chlorinated club team pools. Yeah, we love the smell of chlorine in the morning (and at noon, and in the evening...).