<p>Can you please share how you balance academics and a varsity sport...
particularly if you are in a heavy science/engineering major with lots of hours in labs etc.</p>
<p>Is it possible to do both well?</p>
<p>If you don't mind--please indicate sport and or major--just for the sake of comparision.
...meaning
am practice vs pm practice
need to travel for competition
if you travel for competition--do you have Fri off from class or how do you handle missing lab, p-sets etc etc?</p>
<p>Sherpa’s son here. I’m on the fencing team and I’m planning on majoring in physics. I was a freshman last year in the Integrated Science program, a double course emphasizing physics, chemistry, and computer science with one lab per week. I never had a problem with scheduling between labs and practice, since there is a campus-wide policy that classes not be scheduled during athletics/extracurricular hours (4:30-6:30). Fencing has two hour practices five days a week, and having the athletic commitment two hours every day sometimes made it tricky to fit schoolwork in. That being said, balancing both is doable. The Integrated Science program is known for being work-intensive, and I was able to keep up and pull off good grades both semesters. Traveling for fencing usually took all weekend, but professors in all of my classes were accomodating provided I informed them well in advance that I would be gone. I was usually able to turn in lab reports and problem sets as many days after I got back as I was gone, so if I was gone two days I’d get a two day extension. Obviously this will vary somewhat with the class and the sport, and I know that it can be significantly more difficult if you have a sport with morning practices, since that hampers your ability to pick up the slack by cutting out sleep time. But at least in my experience coaches and especially professors understand how hard it is to balance and are willing to help make it work.</p>
<p>Not to intentionally be negative, but good luck with Varsity sports once JP and Thesis work is involved (of course assuming hard sciences, ie lab). It’s probably going to be even more crazy than sports + ISC. Though if anyone can do it, I’m sure it’s you.</p>
<p>Princeton (and all the IVYies) has 30+ varsity teams … there are about 1000 students a year balancing life as student athletes at each IVY league school … if your child handled it in high school they should be able to handle it in college. To me the bigger question is the student-athlete OK with the sport dominating their life outside the classroom in season.</p>