Natural talent is notoriously hard to quantify, but we're certain you'll need a lot of it if you want to be a rockin' NCAA swimmer. Dedication, mental toughness, and endurance are the other most important qualifications for success. For a quantitative analysis of what it takes to be sought after for a D-1 school, check out The Real Poop.

If your goal is to swim for a D-I program, you have one main thing to accomplish: you have to appear as a likely point-winner for your college team. Teams care about their regional championships like the PAC 12 and the Big 10, but they care the most about the NCAA championships. Things like the Olympics live outside of the purview of the university but what university isn't proud to point to one of their students as an Olympian?

If you're a D-1 caliber swimmer, it's likely that you already know it. It's also highly likely that for the last two or three years, swimmers from the college teams you would be targeting have already put their arms over your shoulders.

It's important that you swim on a high school varsity team in addition to a club team. Dual team status will increase your hours in the pool, put you in contact with more coaches and other people in the swimming world, expose you to varying degrees of competition, and send you to more meets. All of this will help improve your times and up your chances of getting noticed by recruiters.

If you're thinking about D-II, D-III, NAIA or junior college swimming, you don't have to do both high school and club. A strong performance in one or the other (along with a tough training regimen) should be enough to score a spot on a team roster.

Better make sure you stack up against current swim team members at your dream school. The key components are always your swimming times and your GPA (source).

Oh, and by the way, there's this little thing called academics, which was the whole reason you decided to go to college in the first place. If you're really going to spend forty-five hours a week training for this slippery sport, what kind of academic progress are you really going to make in a major that will be prized by employers? Think hard and read about Faust before you sign that full ride to the University of Whatever.