<p>Hello, I might be attending an Ivy League school as an athlete. I was just wondering whether it is especially difficult to balance academics and sports. Thanks!</p>
<p>I have a family friend who played football at Princeton and was majoring in EE. He dropped the team after the first year to keep up his grades.</p>
<p>I’ve read a lot of threads on here asking about the same thing. Consensus is there’s no consensus. You have situations such as above where it’s too much for people, and then people report fantastic results. I think it just depends on the student and their time management skills. Athletes are going to have access to more academic support than a normal student generally speaking. It’s hard though, thats the one thing I can take away from what people say about it.</p>
<p>The ivies have among the most varsity sports, typically in the low 30s, of any D1 schools … and are among the smaller D1 schools … so varsity athletes are a much a bigger percentage of the student population than at D1 schools typically thought of when one thinks of D1 sports like Ohio State or Alabama. So clearly LOTS of ivy athletes balance athletics and academics.</p>
<p>I know several athletes here at Princeton and the ones who are really enthusiastic about their sport seem to really be able to balance it well. I also know several who dropped the sport after their freshman year to keep up with grades. It all depends on the person, I guess.</p>
<p>It is also going to depend heavily on the sport as well but as most people are saying, you’ll find examples of people who succeeded or failed at balancing athletics and academics for every single sport at every single school.</p>
<p>Also likely to depend on how demanding the major.</p>
<p>I had several athletes as RAs last year at my Ivy (I was a hall director) and most of them seemed to be able to manage their athletics, RA jobs, academics and other activities just fine. In fact, the athletes were some of the least stressed out and high-strung RAs we had. And they ranged in majors. One of our community assistants was an engineering major who played 2 sports, IIRC!</p>
<p>^that’s a good one, but my personal favorite is a former all-ivy football player we had that was a rhodes finalist and after failing to be kept by any NFL team post training camp had to use his backup plan - his harvard law acceptance.</p>
<p>Jeremy Lin is probably one of the best examples of an Ivy League athlete balancing studies and sports.</p>
<p>^ Jay Fiedler & Ryan Fitzpatrick as well</p>
<p>I mean the 3 of them were all extremely successful ivy league athletes but none of them have any major academic accomplishments like Nick Hartigan (the one I’m referencing) or Patrick Witt (Yale QB and Rhodes Finalist) or non ivy athlete Myron Rolle (FSU safety) who actually won the Rhodes Scholarship AND played in the NFL and is about to start his first year in med school.</p>
<p>It is possible but you have to balance your time and spend your free time studying and not partying.</p>