I wouldn’t think d1 sports at a high level undermines the ability to get a top education. Stanford usc Michigan cal uva unc duke bc Notre dame to name just a few.
Note that D1-FCS football can be a lot of fun, even though it gets nowhere near the coverage of D1-FBS football. For example, you probably won’t find the Harvard-Yale game (134 meetings to date) on ESPN or Fox Sports, but anyone has attended one of these schools can tell you about the tradition and excitement. The same is true for Lehigh-Lafayette games (153 meetings, most in college football), and W&M-U of Richmond games (128 meetings, most in the south).
It is, in fact, on TV. It may have been on ESPN-U last year but it was definitely on.
Football isn’t the only sport at these schools. Many find the ‘school spirit’ watching lacrosse, rowing, or hockey.
Are the high-level athletes at those schools academically comparable to the rest of the student body? Or do they have average SAT scores that are hundreds of points lower?
Here’s a hint: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/paper-trail/2008/12/30/athletes-show-huge-gaps-in-sat-scores
Now, it’s true that top schools with less athletic emphasis – e.g. Ivies, other D1-FCS schools like Lehigh or W&M, or D3 liberal arts colleges – will bend their normal academic standards for athletes as well. But – they won’t bend as far. And as a result, they aren’t nationally competitive in major college sports. And that’s what I meant when I said that such schools had “high academic standards” – I was talking about the standards for athletes in particular, not the standards for the student body in general.
Absolutely. Sometimes the Ivies and similar schools can be nationally competitive in “minor” college sports that the “power” schools are less interested in, like Cornell or Lehigh in wrestling, BU in hockey, Johns Hopkins in lacrosse, or Dartmouth in skiing.
OK, I stand corrected, the Harvard-Yale game was televised on CNBC. However, CNBC is not exactly one of the big players in sports broadcasting. They aired a grand total of six college football games last year, only one of which (Miami OH vs. Notre Dame) involved top-tier (D1-FBS) schools.
@corbett. I don’t need a hint but thanks. However. Aside from the broad generalizations I think that in some sports at some schools with some student athletes there is a disparity. But the duke Stanford cal and nd student athletes are remarkably bright and accomplished.
I’m not sure what the point is. It’s just not accurate to state the schools I mentioned offer anything but a world class education. Athletes included if they want it.
I would posit there are plenty of ivy footballers hoop and lax athletes who might not get in to any of the schools I mention without the athletic advantage.
A fairly large portion of the Ivy league schools student bodies are varsity athletes. The schools are smaller and each sponsors 25-35 varsity teams. They aren’t bending much as all those athletes ARE the student body.
The football team at Texas is about 120 players. There are 18 varsity teams The student body is about 40k undergrads. If they bend the admission standards for 50 football players, who cares? Even if there are 1000 athletes admitted with under 36 ACTs, that still leaves 39000 students to bond with as intellectual peers.
We may have different standards for “remarkably bright and accomplished”. Of course, it’s subjective.
It’s definitely worth looking at Cal Poly. It’s just beyond your high end cutoff in size, but it really feels smaller. They have a very good ME program where grads walk with quite a bit more hands on experience than they do from the average program without compromising theory. This is due to the fact that every class has a lab except for the most theoretical graduate level classes like Continuum Dynamics and Viscous Flow. There are more than 80 labs in the College of Engineering alone. Classes are small (the largest lecture hall on the whole campus is in the business school; it holds 200) and since there isn’t a doctoral program, they don’t use TAs even for labs and discussions. Almost every one of my son’s instructors held a PhD. School spirit is high. Students always look happy. They have D1 sports, but they aren’t awesome, unless you are into soccer. The Cal Poly UCSB game routinely gets over 20,000 attendees. It’s standing room only at both schools. Lastly, it’s in an idyllic location on the Central California Coast, north of Santa Barbara, South of Monterey. To get an idea what students are doing there for clubs besides the typical SAE and concrete canoe (national champs 2010, 2011, 2012) stuff, check out PROVE Lab and CubeSat. Good luck!
Marquette is mid-sized and has wonderful engineering facilities. The big sport is basketball.
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Marquette is mid-sized and has wonderful engineering facilities. The big sports are basketball and tennis.
@corbett ? 10 year+ old data? And basketball ? Do you think the sport with 12 student athletes represents the population of student athletes? And many in this particular sport are urm. How about comparing the students in the dozens and dozens of other sports. Also how do the students compare to others in their basic demographic. But the point for me was only that there are top top schools that are also sports powerhouses. I never said that students werent given a academic preference. This is so off topic. Back to our regularly scheduled programing OP
What is a “reasonable amount” for your family? How much are they able (and willing) to pay per year?
Unless you can get a big merit scholarship (which could happen with your stats), then chances are, the best balance of quality/price is at your own state flagship. Many state flagships seem to satisfy your basic criteria (more or less.)