What actually changed in athletic training
Athletic training used to be a bachelor’s-entry profession. It isn’t any more. The Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education, which accredits the programs that make you eligible to certify, stopped allowing baccalaureate programs to enroll students after the fall 2022 term. Entry now runs through an accredited graduate program.
That single sentence has a consequence most degree pages still haven’t caught up with. You cannot sit the Board of Certification exam without graduating from a CAATE-accredited program, and your program director has to confirm it. The BOC states that requirement plainly. No accredited program, no exam. No exam, no ATC credential. And in most states, no ATC credential means no license to practice.
So athletic training is now the only career route on this site with a hard structural gate. Exercise physiology has certifications employers want. Athletic training has a chain where every link is mandatory, and it starts with which program you enroll in.
What this means if you’re picking a bachelor’s now
Your kinesiology bachelor’s is preparation, not qualification. That’s not a knock on the degree. It’s the same relationship a pre-med biology degree has to medical school, and nobody thinks the biology degree was wasted. But it does change what you should be optimising for when you choose one.
You’re no longer picking the program that trains you to be an athletic trainer. You are picking the program that gets you admitted to one that does. Those are different selection criteria: prerequisite coverage, GPA support, observation-hour opportunities and whether the department has relationships with graduate programs matter more than whether the undergraduate degree has “athletic training” in its title. Some do, and it means less than it used to.
One useful sanity check on the O*NET numbers before you plan around them. O*NET reports 54% of respondents saying a master’s is required and 37% saying a bachelor’s. That 37% is not a loophole. It reflects the many athletic trainers already working who entered under the old bachelor’s route and are still in the job. It does not describe a door that is open to you now.
How to become an athletic trainer, in order
Five steps, and the accreditation check belongs at step two rather than at the end.
-
Get a bachelor's that covers the prerequisites
4 years
Anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, statistics, and usually psychology and nutrition. Kinesiology and exercise science degrees cover most of this by default, which is why they are the common feeder. Check the specific graduate programs you are targeting, because their lists differ.
-
Verify the graduate program is CAATE-accredited
do this early
This is the step that decides whether the rest is possible. An unaccredited master's in a related field will not make you exam-eligible, no matter how good it is. Verify it on CAATE's own directory rather than on the program's marketing page.
-
Bank observation hours while you're an undergraduate
concurrent
Graduate programs want to see that you have watched the job being done. Athletic training rooms at your own institution are the obvious place, and the relationship is worth more than the hours.
-
Complete the accredited master's
2 years
Two years of coursework plus supervised clinical education across a range of settings. The clinical placements are in person by design, which is the main reason there is so little fully online provision at this level.
-
Pass the BOC exam, then get licensed
months
The exam is $375 in the US or Canada, with a separate application fee of $75 for NATA members or $100 for non-members. Recertification is 50 CEUs every two years once you are past the initial staggered schedule. Then check your state board, because licensure is separate from certification.
What athletic trainers earn
The median is $62,520 a year (BLS, May 2025), with the bottom tenth under $48,180 and the top tenth above $88,760. BLS counts 30,500 athletic trainers employed nationally, which makes it a considerably larger occupation than exercise physiology.
Weigh that against six years of tuition rather than four. This is the honest arithmetic the transition forces: the same median that looked reasonable against a bachelor’s now sits behind a master’s, and nobody adjusted the salary to compensate. Our state-by-state breakdown shows where the number moves most, and the career profile has the full education spread.
If that maths doesn’t work for you, it is worth knowing what else the degree reaches. Exercise physiology is clinical work you can enter with the bachelor’s, and recreational therapy is the most consistently bachelor’s-entry clinical role in the field. Neither is athletic training. Both cost two fewer years.
Four mistakes this change creates
- Assuming a bachelor's titled "athletic training" still makes you exam-eligible. After fall 2022 it does not, and some of those degrees still exist as non-accredited undergraduate majors.
- Reading the 37% bachelor's figure on O*NET as a current entry route. It describes people already in the job, not a door you can walk through.
- Choosing an online bachelor's without checking how the laboratory prerequisites will be satisfied. Only 6% of bachelor's programs in our rankings are flagged fully online, and graduate admissions committees look specifically at those lab courses.
- Leaving the accreditation check until you apply to graduate programs. Verify CAATE accreditation before you commit to an undergraduate plan, because it determines which graduate programs are even worth targeting.
The master’s rankings on this site cover 39 states and score programs on completion, selectivity and cost. They are not a list of CAATE-accredited athletic training programs, and should not be read as one. Verify accreditation with CAATE directly for any program you are seriously considering.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure in this guide is computed at build time from the same federal IPEDS data behind the program rankings, so it moves when the data moves rather than being typed in once. Wage figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release. Certification rules come from the issuing body’s own page, with the date each was checked on the certification pages.
- CAATE, professional program requirements, the fall 2022 enrollment cutoff, checked 27 July 2026
- BOC, steps to become certified, exam eligibility, fees and recertification, checked 27 July 2026
- O*NET 29-9091.00, Athletic Trainers, education distribution