<p>I've heard from a various people, weirdly enough all in girl's water polo, that Princeton does not treat the athlete recruits very well. I know at least two girls who were scouted by and then visited Princeton only to decide that they hated the way they were treated. Is this true of the school as a whole? Just for water polo? True in any way?</p>
<p>Thank you for replies, I am really only asking out of curiosity.</p>
<p>The school doesn’t <em>treat</em> athletes any differently. That’s why Princeton is so great - it doesn’t give preferential treatment.</p>
<p>I do not mean preferential treatment or anything. I am more referring to the way the coaches view the players. Sorry if my original post was ambiguous.</p>
<p>All the athletes I know at Princeton get treated like royalty. Not sure if the situation you described is unique to the girls you met but I have heard nothing but great things.</p>
<p>@cardoza. I think you may have confused Yale and Princeton. Yale has devalued sports over the past ten years, reducing it’s athletic recruitment from 18% of the student body to about 13% today, giving rise to coaches wondering if Yale should drop out of the Ivy League Athletic Conference. That kind of situation is NOT happening at Princeton.</p>
<p>Let me clarify. I am not talking about a devaluing of the importance of sports at Princeton. I am merely talking about the attitude of the coaches and how they treat the players. One girl said that the coaches were all very rude to their players. I am wondering if this is a substantiated statement, or merely just an outlier opinion. Thank you Cantiger, your response has informed me the most.</p>
<p>cardoza: Perhaps it’s only the women’s water polo team… that’s a possibility</p>
<p>roommate’s a crew recruit he says the boathouse atmosphere is awesome. So it might just be the women’s waterpolo team …</p>
<p>This situation seemingly involves experiences from an “official visit”, which are expense paid overnight recruiting visits for prospective athletic recruits. Typically the recruits are treated very well on these visits. DS was treated well on his OV several years ago, and has hosted a number of recruits while at P, and hasn’t encountered anything like the OP reports.</p>
<p>But he isn’t on the women’s water polo team, so who knows?</p>
<p>Edit to add: Gibby is spot on about Yale. Their devaluation of athletics is not only affecting their teams’ performance, it is also reportedly negatively impacting athlete morale.</p>
<p>Princeton has certainly not devalued the importance of sports. Even though I am not a recruited athlete, I know plenty of people who are, and I have never heard anything like this from them.</p>
<p>A sample of two or three in women’s water polo isn’t enough to draw a sensible conclusion about Princeton athletics, good or bad. </p>
<p>Any generalization about how the coaches of 30+ sports treat their athletes is one that should be ignored. There’s too much variance, sport-to-sport and coach-to-coach. You need to automatically question your source. Also, considering there are no athletic scholarships and no change in financial aid if an athlete stops playing, the coaches can’t all treat all players poorly, or the players would all quit. </p>
<p>At any college, there will be disgruntled athletes. Almost all Division I athletes were superstars in high school. They are no longer superstars when they get to the next level, where the caliber of play is much, much higher. These superstars arrive at college, and they’re no longer on an altar. They may be getting no playing time, or not as much as they want or think they should.</p>
<p>College coaches also tend to be more demanding than are high school coaches. Some coaches are monsters, some will come across as monsters to some players, and some coaches come across as sweet and gentle in the opinion of most of that team’s players.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone. You guys said what I was assuming. And yes, they were on the overnight visits apparently.</p>
<p>I’d like to add that Princeton athletics has been having a really awesome year so far. We had a bonfire celebration to celebrate beating both Harvard and Yale for football and several other sports won major awards</p>