<p>How big of an effect, do you feel that your sports program has on the prestige of your education? I mean, there are teams like University of Texas at Austin who are #52 on the US News Rankings, but whose sports program is top notch. Then there's several LAC's on here like Swarthmore and Wellesley who are 3 and 4 on the US News Rankings, but whose sports program I've never even heard of. I mean, I know that a lot of the schools that a lot of people drool over on CC, I've never even heard of. Maybe its my ignorance, but does the general public/general employers read the US News Rankings? </p>
<p>What school do you guys go to and what importance does a school's sports rep. have on its general reputation?</p>
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Maybe its my ignorance, but does the general public/general employers read the US News Rankings?
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<p>Nope. </p>
<p>I chose my school based on athletics (or, rather the school chose me :)). I could never see myself at a school where athletics aren't relatively important (i.e. - a Swarthmore or Wellesley) or where the sports weren't Division I-A.</p>
<p>A strong sports program definitely helps a school, but I would think that this generally applies moreso to private schools, and not publics like UT. Obviously, due to the nature of public schools having to accept more instate applicants than not, the general quality of education is based on the quality of applicants in the state. No matter how popular the school becomes out of the state there will always have to be 60-80% (whatever UT accepts) students coming from within. On the other hand, a private school like Duke benefited greatly from improving its basketball program, increasing the number and quality of applicants from all over the country, increasing its revenue, etc, and thus becoming today what is believed to be one of the top 10 schools in the nation by many.</p>
<p>I chose my school partly because sports are nearly non-existant. School spirit and athletics are both low. =) I didn't want a school where all everyone talked about before class was how the team did the night before...</p>
<p>At LAC's sports aren't big, with a small student body, the school cannot afford to spend so much money on sports, there won't be enough interest.</p>
<p>My school is Division III so clearly we don't get noticed and we don't get television coverage though some of our DIII teams - track, lacrosse, rugby, swimming - can take on weaker DI's. But at the same time, my school is insanely athletic. About 75% of the student body is involved in some kind of sport - varsity, club or intramurals. Personally, I play club ice hockey and pretty much everything through intramurals. I love the competitiveness and the athleticism of the school but at the same time there are no "jocks" here so I know that the person sitting next to me in class, even if he is the star player on the football team, deserves to be here academically as much as I do.</p>