<p>Stanford seems to offer the best of both worlds as far as high level academics and high level athletics. Are there any non-revenue sport athletes out there who can talk to me about how hard it is to juggle the two things? How good is the academic support for athletes? The Ivy coaches have tried to imply that the giving of scholarship money means some level of "ownership" of the student, and that this is always a bad thing for the student. Thoughts?</p>
<p>Being a varsity athlete is a commitment whether you're on scholarship or not, at an Ivy or at Stanford. I don't buy the Ivy coaches' argument, though, that $ equals ownership by the student equals bad. Think about their motivation for telling you that. Assuming that you don't suck at whatever sport it is you play, clearly they would be telling you something like that to give you a reason to choose them over Stanford, or any other DI school out there. Getting money for school is a big perk, so they need to come up with an explanation, valid or not, to put themselves in a better light.</p>
<p>As I said before, regardless of the sport you play being a varsity athlete is a huge commitment. You'll have to make sacrifices, get up early when you don't want to, but in return you'll become really close friends with your teammates, get to play the sport you love and maybe win a game or two along the way.</p>
<p>There certainly exists academic support for athletes. For example there's a tutoring/academic center where they have tutors each night for a lot of the big intro classes that will come and go over Psets, etc. At the end of the day though you'll have to put in the work to get everything done. You're schedule will be fuller than a lot of your other classmates because of practices, and depending on the sport and your coach you'll probably have some early mornings on top of that.</p>
<p>How bad is the travel? Do the teams go by bus to Oregon, Washington, Arizona, etc.?</p>
<p>Generally you're going to fly. Busing is mainly done to Cal and maybe a place like St. Mary's.</p>