It is a lot easier to walk to the pool on a winter morning at Stanford than at Harvard. You will be challenged more both academically and athletically at Stanford. Water polo travel from Harvard is much more of a strain than the travel for the Stanford team - except that Stanford has more post season play. In general H attracts more student who used their sport as a means to an end, and more S athletes continue to pursue the highest level in their sport. Ivy league play is a lot of fun and the history and connections can not be denied. But Stanford offers their own version of that. The schools have unique atmospheres, communities and geographies that surround them. Which would appeal more if you weren’t going to continue to play? Interview the academic departments you are interested in. You cant go wrong, but I’m sensing Stanford might be a better fit for you.
Harvard doesn’t even have BME or mechanical engineering. Stanford beat Harvard 21-5 last year in water polo. The talent level is not even close and you know that. This seems like a rather easy choice assuming Stanford doesn’t demand significantly more practice and training time, which you should be able to find out from the coaches.
That’s a good point @cheetahgirl121 made about fields athletes tend to major in at Stanford, and there are Stanford teams where athletes tend to cluster in certain majors.
Here’s an April Fool’s day article from the Stanford Daily on this phenomenon (in a semi-joking way).
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2016/04/01/sts-discontinued-athletes-panic/
When I look at the Stanford water polo rosters though, it seems like a reasonably broad distribution of majors on both the men’s and women’s teams, including a good number of engineering majors.
OP, I don’t believe either school has an undergraduate business major though both have very strong graduate schools of business.
@polodude, as others have said, the caliber of water polo at Stanford will certainly be higher than Harvard. As for academics, you can do a search on Harvard v Stanford and find all sorts of contentious threads on that topic. Harvard Econ is world renowned - Stanford Engineering is excellent, although contrary to some info posted here, Harvard does indeed have ME and an AB program in BME. Let’s face it, a degree from either school certainly won’t hold you back in the future.
I think a fundamental difference in the life of a student-athlete is that at Stanford, like most D1 scholarship schools, athletes have certain perks - tutoring, dining, scheduling, etc. that may not be available to the general student body. Harvard, like all Ivies, pretty much treats the athletes the same as the rest of the student body. Typically there are no dedicated athletic tutoring services and there isn’t anybody checking up on your schedule and classwork to make sure you remain eligible.(other than the same advisers available to every student) Some people see this as a negative, some see it as the way all college athletics should be.
The Stanford waterpolo team may be much better than Harvard, but the OP may be a superstar at Harvard and a backup player at Stanford. Just a personal decision.
Also, the OP may qualify for a lot of financial aid at Harvard, but only a partial athletic scholarship at Stanford
I know when my son approached the Harvard regional rep and asked him what kind of academic support the school
offers its recruited athletes, the rep looked stoned faced and said, “none. Our athletes are like any other student who is involved in demanding ECs”. I was taken back a bit by his response but I actually have come to think its a more healthy and productive mindset for the recruited athlete. Sends the message…you’re not all that, get over yourself…
Let’s be honest though. The academic support available to everyone at Hatvardand the like is ample. It is not like they are cutting these kids loose without any support.
@Ohiodad51 my point is that they don’t provide any special support to athletes. I assume, from what others have said, that Stanford is different in that respect. That would be important if a potential student is weighing options.
I disagree with the last statement of post #24. The financial aid at Stanford is just as generous as Harvard’s. However, if the OP isn’t eligible for FA,he might still get some athletic money at Stanford, which he definitely won’t at Harvard.
My D had the exact same choice to make and chose Stanford. One reason was that athletes are valued by the Stanford community in general, including academically. Harvard’s attitude seems to be that athletes are a necessary evil that bring down the academic level of the school. On her official visit to Harvard she was told by the team members that some professors automatically consider the athletes to be intellectually sub-par.That was a huge turn-off to my high-stats kid who had the intellectual goods for H, just the same as the non-athletes. At Stanford, her teammates included pre-med (chem/human bio), pre-law (the gamut of majors), management engineering, and computer science majors and more. One became a Rhodes scholar.
D loved, loved, loved her time there–even though her sports career was a bit disappointing. You have to be prepared for the reality that Stanford produces Olympians and pro athletes. You might rise to the challenge and be able to hold your own among them on the team, or become one of them yourself, but you also might not. Are you OK with that? I’d say the only downside is that at Stanford a lot of freshmen are redshirted, which means they don’t compete their first year and then can stay an extra year to play. Granted, some are able to co-term and get a master’s in 5 years, but for D’s area of interest that wasn’t possible. She would have competed all 4 years at H.
PS. My best friend’s S who went to Stanford sat in one of the toughest engineering classes with one of the football stars during the Luck era. Stanford athletes are generally quite smart. Sure, some are brighter than others, but they can usually manage to major in what they want. D’s bf, a baseball player, majored in management engineering and got a good job right out of college even though he played baseball every summer and never had a real internship. Many employers respect Stanford athletes, and currently a lot of D’s athlete friends are employed by the top consulting firms. That is, the ones that aren’t in Rio!
I met a receiver who was part of the Elway team 30+ years ago, played a couple of years in NFL but went bust due to some injuries (which he could have recovered from if it is now due to modern surgery processes). He seems to have been well educated and works for a well known investment firm and well settled despite not panning out professionally.
For those who haven’t seen it, Richard Sherman (Stanford grad) gave a great explanation of the challenges faced by student athletes. One of the things he touches on that I think few understand is that the time commitment is not just practice. It is also the lifts, and in football particularly the meetings, which really eat into an athlete’s day.
TheGFG “My best friend’s S who went to Stanford sat in one of the toughest engineering classes with one of the football stars during the Luck era.”
Here is an interesting tidbit. I was a TA (section leader) for a class that Andrew Luck took. Stanford students take tests on the honor system and usually sign their names to the test. Someone offered me $200 for Luck’s test with his signature. At the time I thought that was strange because I didn’t know who Luck was. I was not following the football team back then
Of course, I would not have considered the offer no matter what the amount.
One positive aspect of Ivy sports IMO is the opportunity to compete with, and in some cases get to know, athletes from other similar (elite) schools.
This is obviously less true for Stanford athletes in the Pac 12, where from an academic perspective the other schools range from world class (e.g. Berkeley) to good but not great.
I think this aspect of Ivy sports may be less true in water polo though, as only a few of the Ivies have varsity teams . . . it is a California sport primarily and I don’t believe there has ever been an NCAA D1 champion for men or women from another state.
That’s a really good point. In track, for example, Harvard and Yale team up every other year to compete against Oxford and Cambridge. The athletes get to know each other pretty well and will take turns hosting each other for the annual HY football game. Especially for athletes, the Ivy network can definitely transcend school affiliations.
Great example @varska and what a nice experience for those track teams.
Except that you can’t combine need based financial aid and athletic financial aid. If the student takes the athletic scholarship at Stanford, the need based aid is gone. I’m not sure how the accounting works for students who are recruits who would do better with the need based aid than the athletic aid, but there are rules about walk ons for different sports. Harvard doesn’t have those accounting issues since there are no athletic scholarship. Harvard could have every single player on every single team on full scholarships and the NCAA wouldn’t care, since they aren’t athletic scholarships. That’s how it is at the service academies and thus they have enormous rosters for every team. Stanford can’t do that.
The OP might get a better financial need based offer at Harvard with a 50% award than at Stanford with a 25% athletic scholarship. It would just depend what his need is and how much of those 4.5 water polo scholarships can go his way.
But you’re missing the point. If the student is eligible for a financial need-based award, then he will be offered about the same amount at both schools. Obviously, the Stanford coaches take the FA information into account and plan their resource utilization accordingly. In that sense, a high financial need athlete can be a good deal for the team because that student will be well taken care of financially without the team having to expend any athletic scholarship resources. Those resources can then be used for top athletes from full pay families. So if the OP has financial need, he will receive about the same package at both schools. If he doesn’t have any need, he could do better at Stanford if Stanford offers athletic money.
I think the athletic scholarship at Stanford helps with those who don’t meet the need component and the coaches need to give a scholarship in order to recruit them or lose them to another school which will have those.
I’m not sure it works that way. In football, Stanford has 85 scholarships. It cannot just give a full financial need scholarship to that 86th player or it would end up with 105 players on full scholarship. It could just shuffle scholarships from full need players to full pay players and every athlete would be on full scholarship. I’m not sure how it works in all the sports, but if the school could just ignore the money received by needy athletes, they’d all do it. And they don’t.
Notre Dame gives very good need based financial aid, but there was a football player there last year who finally got a football scholarship for his senior year (many tears from him AND his parents). Before that, he could take no need based aid from the school because it would have put them over the limit for scholarships for the team. If ND could get around the limit on scholarships by just giving need based aid to half the athletes, it would. There would be no need to limit the number of scholarships on any team if schools could just award need based aid instead of athletic aid. Why limit the number of water polo scholarships to 4.5 if the school can just give out 15 need based awards?
Stanford, ND, Duke, Vandy have to follow the NCAA rules even though they could give need based aid to a lot more athletes and save the athletic aid for full pay families.