<p>How about a school like Stanford or Notre Dame for football? I don’t intend to play football in college, but both schools are football oriented but extremely obsessed with academics, aren’t they? Yale, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn all have outstanding lacrosse teams that compete for the championship every year, so what makes that different than another sports oriented DI school, like Hofstra?</p>
<p>Notre Dame isn’t Ivy or Stanford in terms of academics. But Stanford’s academics is on par with the Ivies. However, Stanford’s football had also been terrible, like the Ivies, until last year.</p>
<p>If the coaches want you on the team you do not have to worry about your GPA or tests or anything else… They will get you in.</p>
<p>If you are not able to play D1 ball however I would personally just go right ahead and bust my butt for a good GPA.</p>
<p>I stand corrected on the Yale lacrosse thing! </p>
<p>Stanford is, in general, a great sports school. It’s produced a lot of NFL players, pro golfers, and baseball players. And, beyond that, I think the Stanford student body is pretty supportive, too. Not to call them athletic supporters, of course.</p>
<p>that’s false. Some schools still want their recruited athletes to meet their minimal standard. There are many instances where a coach wants certain players, but couldn’t get them in because they can’t meet the minimum academic standard (UCLA/Stanford/Ivy League are known for their strict policy on admitting recruited athletes). </p>
<p>On the other hand, schools from SEC or Big TEN or USC or other football frenzy schools will admit any players that coaches want even if their GPA is 0.0.</p>
<p>I can tell you that the Columbia football team staff issued formal letters of support for exactly thirty players this past year - this includes transfers. These letters were forwarded to the admissions office and all thirty guys were admitted. From past experience, which is admittedly limited, this is typical.</p>
<p>And how do you know those thirty players did or did not meet the minimum standard?</p>
<p>I’m not saying that they didn’t meet some kind of minimum standard. This conversation, I thought, is just about how there’s a different academic standard for athletes applying to Division 1 sports schools.</p>
<p>“Yale, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn all have outstanding lacrosse teams”</p>
<p>Really? The only school I associate with lacrosse is Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>Well Cornell was number 1 for a good quarter of the 2011 season, Harvard did very well, Yale was ranked in the mid-twenties most of the time, and Penn lost in the first round of the playoffs. Impressive teams for an Ivy League! I never will understand how they do well when competing with schools that offer full rides and are party schools.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but I don’t think athletics will help you unless you’re a recruited athlete.</p>
<p>If you want to be recruited I’d advise contacting the coaches asap, because a lot of kids may have already committed to the programme.</p>
<p>And schools also have camps where they get players to commit. So you might want to look into that.</p>
<p>But, schools recruit the top athletes. Idk how good you are, but you should probably be on the all-state team. I’m in the recruiting process at Georgetown for soccer, and I was trained at Inter Milan’s soccer school. That’s the approximate caliber of athletes that are getting recruited out there.</p>
<p>Otherwise if you really want to play just try as a walk-on.</p>
<p>David,
I’d say it’s because enough recruited athletes are shrewd enough to realize that they’ll never play pro lacrosse, so a degree from Harvard will look a lot better than one from a state school that’s a lacrosse powerhouse.</p>