IMG Academy says its grads were 11 times likelier to play college sports

IMG Academy, a Florida boarding school for athletes, says its class of 2026 was "roughly 11 times more likely to compete at the college level than their peers nationally." The school made the claim in a release on August 20, 2026, carried on GlobeNewswire.

The release counts 525 students across the school's boarding, postgraduate and sport only programs. Of those, 366, about 70 percent, went on to play their sport in college, and 512 of 525 were placed into college in some form. The class drew more than 1,100 acceptances from more than 800 colleges and universities, including 34 Top 25 commitments, 11 Ivy League commitments and 5 military academy commitments, and 4 students signed professionally. The release does not give a Division I share.

Mike Milliron, the school's chief operating officer for campus, said: "These outcomes are proof of what happens when you treat sport as critical education, not an extracurricular."

The 11 times figure compares the 70 percent against a national average the school puts at "just 6% among the same sport and gender mix." The release does not name a source for the 6 percent.

The NCAA publishes its own estimates of how likely a high school athlete is to make an NCAA team, sport by sport, on 2022 to 2023 data. They range from 3.6 percent in men's basketball and 4.5 percent in women's basketball to 7.5 percent in football, 8.1 percent in baseball and 13.3 percent in men's ice hockey. Those figures count NCAA programs only, and leave out the NAIA and junior colleges.