My son is a freshman on the football team at a Division III school. As an incoming freshman he was assigned a roommate from the football team, and as soon as we were allowed we put down our deposit in order to help secure their preferred dorm. The earlier you put down your deposit, the earlier your time slot for room/dorm selection. I was surprised that as an athlete they did not receive any priority in registering for classes, and my son did not get his first choice in schedule…but it all worked out in the end (after some scrambling). Now he is back at school for Spring semester and we’ve found ourselves having to deal with housing for next year. My son would like to live in on-campus apartment-style housing, but there are no guarantees that he can get his preferred choice of on-campus housing. Now he’s having to look to live off-campus, which is not very convenient, given the amount of time they need to spend on campus. I’ve been trying to find info online about what other DIII schools do with regards to offering priority registration and housing selections to their athletes, but this info is not very easy to find. I appreciate any input from members of this community.
I don’t see why a D3 athlete should get preferential treatment, although some schools (U of Chicago comes to mind) house athletes near gyms/practice fields, being mindful of the time crunch that athletes often run into in college.
In the recruiting process for my D3 athlete (about 15 schools), we did not hear about any schools which offered special class registration or housing for team members. We did talk to some some schools where no classes are scheduled after 4pm to remove any potential class and practice or other EC conflicts. In terms of housing, at least all the schools we talked to, housing was a lottery and no one had any guarantees for any particular kind of housing. Perhaps encourage your student to be flexible in thinking about sophomore year. For instance, if access to specialized food prep or needing access to food at unusual times, find out which dorms have kitchens so that a student can prepare protein shakes, high protein meals etc. on their own schedule easily.
My DD applied ED for athletics. One of the unexpected benefits was the freshman housing rule that rooms were assigned based on your enrollment date that resulted in a ton of freshman athletes on her floor. They thought it was great.
An alternative approach to cosseting athletes is at Juniata:
This is something that varies from school to school, and something that we asked about in our process.
None of the DIII teams we were looking at had preferred housing, athletes dorms or cafeterias, or preferred registration. Most of the schools we were looking at had students living on campus all 4 years, but of course choice of dorm is never guaranteed. How is priority for housing determined? Some schools don’t guarantee housing at all. Some guarantee freshman year and expect most to move off campus after freshman year, etc. This can vary a lot.
Rowan has early registration for their athletes. I don’t think they get preferred housing though.
My daughter (d2 school) had early registration, but all freshman schedules are determined by computer (most are engineers who take the basic assortment of classes like calc, chemistry, etc). The schedules for the freshman athletes have classes during the coach’s preferred times.
Second semester, there was an issue and she couldn’t register during the early athletic time period, so didn’t get the lab she needed. I told her to go ahead and register for the lab time that interfered with practice and tell the coach. That lasted about 1 hour and the coach had her moved into the original lab time.
My son’s D3 school does not give any registration or housing preference to athletes.
They do put teammates together as freshman roommates - I think that was mostly because Fall teams moved in early and Winter athletes come back early from Winter break so no one is in a room alone.
At ours, no housing or scheduling priority. I suspect that if a student had a scheduling issue (unlikely because of when practices are scheduled), they’d help address but they wouldn’t give them a different type of priority than a non-athlete (i.e., give them a preference normally reserved for an upperclassman or major if they were neither. )
Very curious why you think a D3 athlete is entitled to any special privilege? I’m not saying it won’t happen at some schools, but that’s clearly the exception and not the rule. And honestly, that would go against the philosophy of D3 athletics, which in part states “Assure that athletics participants are not treated differently from other members of the student body”.
Agreed. It’s not even universal at D1 schools. If special privileges were a parameter for college selection,one would have thought that the student/parent would have asked the question of the college earlier.
I have no issue with D3 athletes getting priority registration. They spend a decent amount of their time practicing, traveling to games, giving up break time, etc… Members of student government at S17’s school get priority registration as well, as do honors college students, so it’s not singling out athletes any more than it is other segments of the population.
As a former D3 athlete, I appreciated any advantage I received but it wasn’t expected. Did I get priority registration or dorm selection - no. But professors were certainly understanding and accommodating of my practice and travel schedule. And while I like Rowan as an option for my '21 athlete, I’ve heard several first hand accounts of the liberties Rowan takes with some of their athletes. And it’s also widely known they have a plan for moving from D3 to D1, though that’s a discussion for a different thread. By the way, none of this is intended as a criticism, but merely to point out that some schools treat their athletes differently.
During an info session at a D3 university a couple of years ago, I asked if athletes received priority registration and the AO actually scoffed and gave me a haughty “NOOOOO”. I hadn’t asked in an assuming or entitled way, just an innocent question.
That attitude, and an odd comment about where we live/our high school, dropped the school from the list. Too bad. On paper it was a great choice, but it was hard to ignore those comments from an AO at a school that purportedly cares greatly about diversity.
@57special Just to clarify that UChicago HAD a situation where you were allowed to choose your dorm based on deposit date. Since most recruited athletes are accepted in the ED1 cycle they were allowed to pick the dorms they wanted and they most often picked the ones closest to the athletic facilities. So technically it wasn’t athletes that were placed near the athletic facilities. However, starting next year UChicago is doing away with priority based on deposit date, so it will not be that way in the future. But, worst case is a 12 minute walk instead of a three minute walk. UChicago athletes do not get preference in scheduling. I’m a father of one of their athletes.
My D at one of the Claremont schools does not get priority anything. She plays a winter sport and had to live in someone elses room in another dorm during winter break because there was only one dorm open for the athletes.
My S is a DIII athlete. He did not get any preferential treatment for housing. For class registration, he was given a very small list of classes many freshmen take, such as intro bio, calc, econ, etc, and was told he could select up to 8 credits that they would place him in before the rest of the freshmen got to register. Most of the classes he did not want or need, so there wasn’t much benefit. Beyond that (and for the remainder of his schedule), there was no preferential treatment.
There seem to be as many answers as there are DIII colleges and universities. It also seems to depend on the culture of the college. At the relatively small-sized NESCACs, athletes tend to be treated like ordinary students, or to put it another way, like ordinary “hooked” students. I know at Williams, care is given so that they are not all housed in the same “entry system” (Williams-speak for first-year dorm assignments that have implications for all four years) and are, in fact, distributed all around campus. At Wesleyan, they are treated the same way during the first year but, from sophomore year forward, are given more freedom to self-select for housing lotteries. Distance from the gym or from the main dining halls just aren’t as big an issue as they might at bigger campuses. If there’s a conflict with practice, the profs are flexible. These schools have been balancing sports and academics for well over a hundred years.
No preferential treatment for my D3 student-athlete, and none expected. There are a lot of athletes on campus. Also, a lot of musicians, theater kids, etc. All treated the same.
One difference between athletes and other students is the hours they keep. Daughter’s school didn’t group them together but they picked their suits together. The 2 suites weren’t in the same building or floor; girls only had one of the 4 suites on each landing anyway as the school was 75% male and only 25% female. One player joined the team late and didn’t get into a suite with the other 8 freshmen on the team. Not a big deal.
However, athletes keep different hours. They were up at 5 and most were in bed at 10. Some people don’t like noisy roommates and 2 or 3 people in the suite up at 5 am is going to disturb most other students.
Some schools adjust their schedules to accommodate the athletes, like no classes after 4 pm so they can practice. My daughter’s school had the teams adjust too. Math exams were given on Thursdays at 7, so teams did not schedule practices on Thursdays (late) and I know my daughter’s team did not have games on Thursdays. At least once, the bus left on Friday after the first period so that they could take the quiz (again I think math) before they left for the weekend. I know my daughter’s section was later in the day, but they let the athletes take the quiz with the earliest section and then go on their way. I don’t think she missed more that 5 days of classes for sports in the entire 4 years; she missed about 5 days because she had the flu (twice in one semester). Her final semester she missed practice once a week because the class was only offered at one time, during practice.