Notre Dame vs MIT? vs the others?

Regional D1 Rowing rankings

http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/rowing/d1/regional-rankings

The way I read the career surveys, MIT students earn a lot more!

@Much2learn

It’s very possible that employers who pay more are doing more recruiting at MIT. That is likely why the average salary is higher. But the reality is…an entry level person at a job is not going to get paid more simply because they graduated from MIT.

@northwesty Notre Dame has big-time nationally ranked ladies rowing, 16th nationally last year. MIT was not ranked even in D3, where Bates, Williams and Wesleyan seem to dominate.

@thumper1 “an entry level person at a job is not going to get paid more simply because they graduated from MIT.”

On Wall Street or in computer science, starting salaries can vary a lot.

MIT is also more intense and students should be learning more in that process, so saying it is just because they went to MIT isn’t really accurate.

Hootie – MIT rows at D1 even though its other sports are D3.

Sure ND ranks higher in D1 than MIT. My point was that ND rowing would likely be the smallest time sport that exists at ND; while rowing is a featured sport at MIT.

I would second the advice to look at the school aside from rowing, then consider the sport secondarily. Lots of kids are injured or just decide they can’t or don’t want to continue with their sport beyond high school.

That said, when considering rowing one suggestion I would make is to see how many kids continue with the sport from year to year. If there are as many seniors as freshman on the larger team you know they’re probably pretty happy with their experience. If there’s a sharp drop in participation after the first or second year it may indicate they’re not. It doesn’t mean the coaching is bad but it may mean it’s hard to row and keep up with academics and that there could be a lot of turnover in her boat.

I’d also see if she can ask someone on each team about the practice schedule. Are they doing two-a-days year round? If they’re out on the water for morning practices what time do they get back and does it work with a civilized breakfast schedule? Do regattas ever interfere with academics, and how does each school handle conflicts?

Any chance she’s rowing in the Head of the Charles? It might be possible to meet some girls from both schools if she’s able to find some time over the weekend when she’s not busy with her team. The students may be more willing to be candid with her when she’s not on an official visit and you could talk with any parents at the races to get the inside scoop from them.

  1. I'm really tempted to say that if you are in a corner of the universe where Notre Dame and MIT seem worth comparing, you should go to Notre Dame. Kids love it, the kids there are smart, it has a great alumni network and name recognition, and it offers quality education and first-rate sports.

MIT? It’s just the pinnacle of the field, the center of the world, the best there is. Not everyone needs or wants that. If you do, Notre Dame is barely on the map.

  1. Actual-factual story, from one of my law school classmates, who grew up in the same near-Midwestern city I did. She went to Notre Dame before it was really co-ed. There were a few years when it was admitting a handful of women to its engineering school, because St. Mary's didn't offer engineering. So she was a female Notre Dame engineer when fewer than 100 of such people existed anywhere in the world.

Anyway, during Christmas vacation she was hanging out at a well-known bar in our city, one that was more or less themed for former Catholic high school football players and the women who loved them. A nice-looking guy started to chat her up. She was interested. He made clear he was in college; she asked him where. Notre Dame. At that point, she knew perfectly well he was lying, because she knew everyone in our city who went to Notre Dame, certainly everyone as good-looking as he was, and she had never seen him before. (He, of course, didn’t bother to ask her about college, because most of the women in that bar in those years would either not have gone to college at all or gone to one of a handful of small Catholic women’s colleges in the area.)

She decided to play cat and mouse. She widened her eyes and looked really impressed. I have some friends who go to Notre Dame! She proceeded to ask him a series of ever more detailed questions about which dorms he had lived in, what classes he took. Within a few minutes, he realized she was completely on to him, and gave up. He had been lying about going to Notre Dame to impress her.

Who was he? The starting quarterback at Yale. First string all-Ivy. A molecular biology major. Really, truly smart. (And very cute, no lying about that.) At that bar in our city, though, being a generic student at Notre Dame was much better chick-bait than being a genius football hero at Yale. He wasn’t wrong about that; he just happened to pick the only woman in the room who knew anything about Yale to talk to. If he had gone to MIT, she might have married him.

The shaggy-dog point: The relative prestige of Notre Dame and MIT depends a lot on context.

I live in the Boston area and understand what you say about ND. Both of my nieces who grew up in this town have gone to ND. The oldest had several investment banking offers and is an analyst now in NYC. No problem getting interviews at the top places. Seriously strong alumni network. Youngest is a junior and is finding the same experience though she wants to do marketing.

Your son needs to answer this question: if the sport went away for whatever reason (injury, loss of passion) and he was just a student there: would he be happy? This happened to my nephew; ended up transferring because when the basketball went away he didn’t really like the school.

All of the schools your son is looking at are fantastic. Have him pick based on fit…the job and the rest will follow. College is about pushing himself and learning and having some fun.

Best of luck!