This is kind of a specific question, I’m not sure if I will get any relevant responses. Does anyone have a perspective of the differences as a student athlete (non-basketball)? I can find plenty of comparisons of the schools otherwise, but not about this area. Obviously there are many different things to consider, but I didn’t know if the overall athlete experience is similar or different at these 2 schools. Ultimately if both schools stay on the radar S will need to visit both, but right now that isn’t really an option.
Thanks for any input.
Well, one is a state school and one is private. Duke can turn down every single NC resident if it wants to, but UNC doesn’t have that option. There will certainly be a good number who know each other from the years of playing high school sports and the state championships in North Carolina. That might be true at Duke lacrosse too, but they’ll know each other from Baltimore and Long Island schools.
Look at the rosters from your sport and see where the kids went to high school.
Will it matter if your son is one of just a handful from OOS? I don’t think so.
I did just look at last year’s roster for UNC, and there were more NC kids than I expected. I am guessing not many make the starting lineup, but I could be wrong. Still it was about a third of the roster. The school is getting a lot of top recruits from around the country in S’s sport right now, so that mix may change.
Lots of differences between the schools in S’s sport specifically. To be honest I don’t know which one he would prefer in that regard. But at least for him personally, one’s strengths are the other’s weaknesses. That’s probably the primary driver of which he would be interested in.
I didn’t know if one school was more athlete friendly (again, non-basketball). I guess that’s the factor I don’t know anything about. Is Duke more like an Ivy, i.e. we have sports, but athletes are treated pretty much like everyone else? And is UNC more like a stereotypical large state school, where the athletes play an outsized role on campus and have access to better food, early class registration, more tutors, etc. than the non-athletes? Or are the schools similar in their treatment of athletes?
Both schools have top programs in basketball and lacrosse. and those players are BMOC (or women). I don’t think athletes are treated the same as other students at either school. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. The Duke lacrosse players were treated pretty unfairly by the school and community. The UNC athletes were getting easy A’s in ‘paper’ classes until that was shut down.
Almost all schools we looked at, big or small, have a registration preference for athletes because of practice times. My daughter has never had a problem getting a class, but then her non-athlete sister has also never had a problem either. When I was a student a million years ago, football and basketball players had training tables but I think they now eat in the regular student dining rooms except on game days and when traveling. Then it’s up to the coaches budgets what they get to eat. My daughter’s coach gives them a budget when they go to a restaurant, her boyfriend’s team (same sport) eats family style at places like Olive Garden. Bigger team, bigger boys to feed. Free breadsticks.
I’m assuming both Duke and UNC coaches have quite a bit of pull. Does anyone know if it is like an Ivy (i.e., coach gets x number of slots as long as they pass the preread)? Or are they given more leeway? I don’t really know how that works for the top academic but non-Ivy schools. Also I don’t know if UNC is given more flexibility since it isn’t on quite the same academic plane. Although I’m OOS, so that may be a factor there too.
Coaches at these schools have a certain number of verbal commitment slots that are provided to them by admissions. So it’s pretty much like Ivies, except that some of the Duke and UNC kids who verbally commit will get scholarships but not all. Then there are kids who missed out on verbal commitment slots but are still recruited. They will get a letter of support from the coach, but their admission is much less automatic than for kids who verbally committed. If UNC gets more leeway, that would just be that they can admit kids with lower academics and maybe they have a few more verbal commitment slots, but I’m not positive about that.