Graduate Certificate or Diploma of Sports Science overview
Graduate certificates in sports science are for those wanting a taste of their specialisation of choice. It’s a broad discipline consisting of coaching, medical and scientific components and career pathways. The study options are just as broad; the University of Queensland provides a graduate certificate in sports medicine, which is for medical practitioners. Others are solely focussed on coaching, whereas others still are about research or utilising the scientific method to contribute new information to the field. These programs take six months of full-time study to complete.
Graduate diplomas offer a more extensive look into these disciplines, taking a year of full-time study to complete or longer if full time. Courses like those offer by Bond University provide more specificity. In their case, this means all the tools students might require to become sports managers; units in social media marketing, managerial finance and international business in addition to knowledge of healthy conduct.
Employment options
Employment options vary between differences in courses. Those who’ve graduated from a program in coaching are best equipped to become coaches working for schools, local clubs or even larger sporting organisations. Those from a more medically focussed program are building upon prior, extensive medical knowledge and experience, making them better suited to hospitals and clinics. The full list of options mentioned here is worth exploring, whatever the program students graduate from.
Scholarships and funding
General scholarship opportunities are available but often come with fairly specific requirements. The Gallipoli Scholarship and Endeavour Scholarships and Fellows initiative exemplify this, with the former requiring applicants to have a descendant who fought in WWI. The latter is more broadly applicable but requires students to study overseas. It’s therefore advised to check these requirements very carefully before applying.
Prerequisites and selection process
This discipline has one of the broadest and varying arrays of prerequisites, all dependent on the area of sports science concerned. Those undergoing a sports medicine course tend to require a bachelor of medicine in addition to two years of work experience. Graduate certificates in coaching, on the other hand, accept a bachelor degree in any discipline, with GPA requirements being no higher than a credit (65%) attained throughout the prior study.