Here is an article I think you all might find interesting. Notre Dame offers the perfect environment for a student-athlete that wants to pursue both academics and sports at a high level.
I personally believe the best universities for those that want to pursue both academics and sports at the highest level are Notre Dame, Stanford, Duke and Northwestern. The stats in this link bear that out…
I cannot say enough good things about the experience our family had as parents of a student-athlete. The coaching, the culture, the teammates and their families, the facilities and the resources to improve were all top notch.
One thing I have read is that Ivy athletes often do not feel supported nor appreciated by the student body at large. I view that as a failing of culture. At Notre Dame, the teams support each other as part of a friendly inter-team competition called Irish on 3 where points get awarded throughout the academic year when athletes show up and cheer on other teams at their games. So if soccer athletes show up at a basketball game they get points and the most supportive team is recognized at the end of the year banquets. If you know where to look on social media you will see pictures of football players lounging in the stands at lacrosse. The OSCAR awards at the end of the year celebrate all teams and again further a sense of being part of a larger team at ND. The teams worked jointly on a Habitat for Humanity house together.
The coaches set a clear priority that academics came first and based on the experience of our child’s team, with multiple people headed off to Med School or Law School, other grad schools and challenging careers in engineering, or business, these priorities yielded success on the field and in the classroom.
The mentoring programs were beyond compare. The famous Notre Dame network is for real. To have professionals at the top of careers in finance or media take time to meet with undergraduates and help advise them on internships and job offers was amazing to us. But ND alums are the ,ind of people that give back.
Because athletes cannot often pursue the Study Abroad programs that others can, due to in-season competition and year-round training, the university also made an effort to create unique programs to give some athletes that global experience in a more condensed form over the summers. I believe Duke and Stanford teamed up later to offer a similar program to their athletes.
I know some of the motivation in the original question was to try to quantify the athletes and figure out if they are REA or RD, to enable a better appraisal of available slots and to better handicap admissions odds., but my experience is that not only are these numbers not available but that it would be a mistake to make too many assumptions on where athletes are on the admissions spectrum. While many seem to believe most athletes are at the bottom half or bottom decile of the class I do not believe that is true at the ND, Stanford or Duke type schools. Many athletes would get into ND on their academic merits and metrics alone and are able to juggle the classroom and sports travel. They also learn to be hyper-efficient and to pull more than their weight on the team-based projects found in many classes. The Notre Dame valedictorian 3 years ago was a varsity athlete. And while Duke claims the most student-athletes on the ACC Honor Roll, ND is second and when you factor in that two of ND’s larger teams are not in the ACC (football is Independent and Hockey is a member of the Big 10) it is almost certain that ND has more student-athelets performing at the top of the GPA charts than any other university in the ACC. And as the link above shows, these athletes graduate and go on to productive careers.
Most of these same career and mentoring and networking opportunities are available to every ND student. In fact there were so may activities and opportunities on the ND buffet table that could not be sampled by athletes due to scheduling that we only wish our child had had more time.
Being a student-athlete at ND was an honor to my child and one they are determined to pay forward.
Having said all that, I wish the very best of luck to all those on pins and needles awaiting your admission decision right now. I sincerely hope for all of you the same incredible experience that we had at Notre Dame.