<p>"all i wanna say is that ivy students have contact with schools like stanford/duke/rice etc, if this idea of "fan sporting experience" appealed to them, they would have lobbied for it."</p>
<p>Heck, if they loved that kind of fan sporting experience, they would have gone to Stanford/Duke/Rice, etc. Since H is more selective than are S/D/R, any student who went to H could have chosen to go elsewhere for a rah rah sports experience.</p>
<p>So I think hawkette's question is a legitimate one for discussion. HYP are on top right now, but for how much longer? Stanford, Duke and others are nipping at their heels. Could a more vibrant sports scene simply add to HYP's greatness? I think it would. IMHO "</p>
<p>So why shouldn't U of Chicago also aspire to sports greatness as it climbs its way into the Top 10?</p>
<p>pizzagirl,
No college has all of the attributes that I listed above. It's all about choices in that elusive search for fit. Frequently, prestige issues override fit considerations (and this works almost always to the benefit of the Ivy colleges). However, if a student uses a list of things to evaluate as I have presented above, he/she is unlikely to miss a lot in evaluating the nature of the non-academic experience that a college will offer. </p>
<p>Going back to your comment earlier about students understanding the athletic life of a college because they went to events in high school, I would probably not agree that all students accurately appreciate the differences. For example, if a student went to a prep school in the northeast, it is quite possible, maybe even likely, that they have never been to a large, nationally relevant college sporting event. Going to the Stanford-Cal "Big Game" or the Duke-U North Carolina basketball games is a world of difference from what one will find at any Ivy sporting event. The Ivy events are really much more akin to a high school event while many of the college events are truly unique and differ significantly from high school and professional events. As you say, many students (like you) don't particularly care and that's fine, but I think some do (including on Ivy campuses) and some would greatly enjoy attending and being part of the scene at such campus-electrifying activities. </p>
<p>Finally, re the issue of school spirit, I think you are missing a large part of what I am saying. Sure, the athletic events bring out school spirit, but few think that Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt or even Notre Dame are reliant on a winning football team to create this. There is great spirit and support among the students and alumni of these colleges, just as there is at the Ivy colleges. But to suggest that that spirit and pride is limited to the sports fields is to not properly understand these campuses. I certainly don't interpret your general lack of interest in Northwestern's athletic life as reflecting a lack of pride in your alma mater. The same is true for all of these colleges. </p>
<p>The major sporting events are merely a venue where (win or lose) students, employees, alumni, locals can get together and have a good time. Going to a home football game at Stanford Stadium or Vanderbilt Stadium with 35-40k other fans may often result in a loss for the home team (the quality of Pac 10 and the SEC football is lightyears different from the Ivy League), but still often results in a whopping good time for the folks who attend. For football, it's more about the scene that surrounds the game, while for basketball, baseball and other sports, it's more about the wins and losses and the team's record tends to drive turnout.</p>
<p>U Chicago is a Division III college. The Ivies are Division I colleges. </p>
<p>Why do you seem so determined to shoot down the idea that any Ivy college (or some of the students that attend) might actually want to see their team pull a Davidson? What's not to like? It's fun, it's exciting and I betcha that the folks affiliated with Davidson have loved every second of their team's run.</p>
<p>
[quote]
in the northeast, it is quite possible, maybe even likely, that they have never been to a large, nationally relevant college sporting event
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I guess "college" is the word in this quoted passage that rescues it from the observation that students in the northeast can watch top-level national sporting events in baseball and football. I don't see what the relevance is here, because the prep schools I know best (Exeter and Andover) have huge enthusiasm for school sports (including math [grin]) and I think a lot of prep school kids have a good idea about how (and whether or not) to be sports fans.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why do you seem so determined to shoot down the idea that any Ivy college (or some of the students that attend) might actually want to see their team pull a Davidson?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Why be determined to bring it up? Bully for Davidson that it got into the NCAA tournament, but there are other aspects of the college experience that most Ivy League students find more about exciting about their colleges.</p>
<p>Why bring it up? Why not? This is college search and selection and helping students understand the nature of their undergraduate experience, in and out of the classroom is part of this. Athletic life can be an important and fun facet of undergraduate life for many, many college students (including at the Ivy colleges) and for many, many, many alumni as well. If anything, it should be brought up more often.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For football, it's more about the scene that surrounds the game, while for basketball, baseball and other sports, it's more about the wins and losses and the team's record tends to drive turnout.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Stanford only regularly sells out the Big Game. Why? Because Stanford football is weak. When Stanford renovated its stadium two years ago, it lowered capacity from over 80,000 to about 50,000 to create a more intimate environment, and to not have so many empty seats. </p>
<p>When Stanford football gets better, more fans will go to the games. Football is just as much about wins and losses as it is about "the scene".</p>
<p>Well, if you bring it up, and I agree that the topic is a legitimate topic to discuss, don't be surprised that you hear opinions that disagree with your own. Personally, whether a college's sports teams contend for national championships, or whether the college even has sports teams, is near the bottom of my list of criteria on which to evaluate colleges. I suppose students who care about this issue a lot already know which colleges have been in national championships in the last ten years (hint: mostly not colleges that we have named in this thread).</p>
<p>I don't think is nipping at anyone's heels right now.......</p>
<p>Davidson, through somewhat of a fluke, wound up with a unique combination of a future NBA player and a very gifted coach. It is a wonderful thing for the school and a lot of fun. My kid would be right in the thick of it if it were happening at his Ivy, but it's not. </p>
<p>The other thing abuut the northeast is that there is a much greater concentration of top-level professional teams, which many of the students have grown up following and being excited about for their whole lives. They don't NEED for their college to satisfy their sports obsession.</p>
<p>"That said, I don’t believe that the academic reputations of Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame have been damaged by their nationally successful sports teams."</p>
<p>This may be true, but would it really be true of the Ivies if they now started giving athletic scholarships, and started admitting athletes with substantially lower academic stats than they currently do? Wouldn't we see articles about all the remedial classes and easy majors they'd have to create to accomodate these athletes? Ivy League is a valuable brand; they can't take the chance of doing anything that would dilute its value.</p>
<p>My point was that at Dartmouth none of the big weekends really had anything to do with athletics. Dartmouth built such amazing special things around the notion of community that the athletics were just not needed. This happens year over year.</p>
<p>"Athletic life can be an important and fun facet of undergraduate life for many, many college students (including at the Ivy colleges) and for many, many, many alumni as well. If anything, it should be brought up more often."</p>
<p>Why should it be brought up MORE often than other personal preference quality of life considerations, such as access to urban life, size of campus, presence / absence of Greek system, presence of nearby musical events? Don't you trust students to be able to have some idea of what they might like or spark to? You seem particularly worried that a student might "miss out" on the fun of being a fan of a highly successful sports team (because it's fun to you). Why is that any more or less concerning than the student who prefers Grinnell "missing out" on the bright lights of the big city, or the student who prefers Reed "missing out" on a Greek system?</p>
<p>"Going back to your comment earlier about students understanding the athletic life of a college because they went to events in high school, I would probably not agree that all students accurately appreciate the differences. For example, if a student went to a prep school in the northeast, it is quite possible, maybe even likely, that they have never been to a large, nationally relevant college sporting event. Going to the Stanford-Cal "Big Game" or the Duke-U North Carolina basketball games is a world of difference from what one will find at any Ivy sporting event."</p>
<p>Hawkette, you make an interesting assumption that going to college sporting events as a spectator is how most people want to or choose to spend their free time. I personally never went to a college sporting event until I myself was in college -- I had no interest and it isn't how I'd spend my time. I don't particularly attend pro sporting events either or watch them on TV. Just not my thing. My high schoolers have been to NU games, but that's *only because we're both alums and we live close to NU and have friends that get together at the game -- if that weren't the case, I can't imagine we'd ever spontaneously attend an NU football game (or any other college near where we live). </p>
<p>Even if they've never been to a college sporting event, the vast majority of hs students have TV's and are at least moderately aware of pro sporting events and the frenzy that can surround them, regardless of whether they themselves are particularly fans. We all know what the Super Bowl is. We all know what the World Series is. We all hear about a particular city going crazy when their team wins a championship. Etc. I think by the time someone is 18, they can figure out whether cheering on teams as a spectator is something that they find personally interesting enough to seek on a college campus, or not. </p>
<p>Feeling "sorry" that certain schools don't routinely field winning sports programs that whip the campus into a frenzy feels like me saying that I feel "sorry" that Reed students don't have a Greek system or that Grinnell students don't have a big city nearby. Different strokes for different folks.</p>
<p>ucbchemegrad,
Stanford averaged over 36,000 fans this season for its home football games, not including the 49,000+ that came to Stanford Stadium for the season-ending contest. </p>
<pre><code>As measured by school size, here is how all of the USNWR Top 30 stacked in terms of average home attendance and the numbers are broken out to compare colleges of similar size:
</code></pre>
<p>Rank, College, Average Home Attendance</p>
<p>Schools of greater than 10,000 undergraduate students
1 U Michigan 110,264
2 USC 86,660
3 UCLA 77,167
4 UC Berkeley 63,136
5 U Virginia 59,447
6 U North Carolina 58,500
7 Cornell 8,697</p>
<p>Schools with 5,000-10,000 undergraduates
1 Notre Dame 80,795
2 Stanford 36,083
3 Vanderbilt 35,626
4 Northwestern 25,446
5 Duke 20,064
6 Yale 19,420
7 Harvard 12,755
8 U Penn 11,090
9 Brown 5,139
10 Columbia 4,576
11 Georgetown (Div I-AA) 3,656
12 Carnegie Mellon 2,292
13 Wash U 1,329
14 Emory </p>
<p>Schools with less than 5000 undergraduates
1 Wake Forest 32,595
2 Rice 14,314
3 Princeton 10,215
4 Dartmouth 5,223
5 Tufts 1,748
6 U Chicago 1,319</p>
<p>tokenadult,
Actually, the athletic excellence of these colleges (Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame) has been stronger than you think. None finished lower than 33rd (Vanderbilt) in the Diretors Cup with the closest Ivy school ranked at 55th (Cornell). Stanford won the Directors Cup for the 13th straight year and Duke won something like 6-7 national titles last year. Northwestern's women's teams were outstanding, including a third consectutive national title in lacrosse. Rice was a fixture in the national Top 10 for baseball while Vanderbilt was Sweet 16 in basketball and # 1 in the country in baseball for much of the season. It was a down year for ND football, but several other of their teams excelled and I think we'd all agree that sporting life is a big part of their college experience. </p>
<p>MOWC,
There are pro teams in the Bay Area, Chicago, Houston and Nashville. I think most who have sampled both the college and professional experiences in these towns would conclude that there is a difference with the pro environments usually larger and cruder. </p>
<p>Hunt,
I think you make a good point about the risk to the Ivy colleges of offering athletic scholarships as it just may be too great and could be seen as devaluing their academic brands, but having both great academics and great athletic scenes and athletic scholarships does not seem to have hurt the academic reputations of Stanford, Duke, et al.</p>
<p>Tokenadult: "Well, if you bring it up, and I agree that the topic is a legitimate topic to discuss, don't be surprised that you hear opinions that disagree with your own. Personally, whether a college's sports teams contend for national championships, or whether the college even has sports teams, is near the bottom of my list of criteria on which to evaluate colleges. "</p>
<p>Mine, too. Couldn't have cared less. Winning football team, losing football team, Division I, Division III, whatever. I *could see caring about sports that I personally played and wanted to continue playing in college. </p>
<p>Anecdotally, I have heard of more than a few USC / UCLA people who won't want their kids applying to the other school because of their sports rivalry. Given that both USC and UCLA are top schools, I personally think that's a goofy reason to not apply to a school that might otherwise be of interest. I get not applying to USC because of its location, or whatever. I truly don't get not applying to USC "because we're a UCLA Bruins family and we couldn't possibly have a USC Trojan fan in the family." That strikes me as dumb to have such a reason. But whatever, it's a free country and no skin off my back if other people use that criterion.</p>
<p>pizzagirl,
I didn't limit the discussion of any non-athletic scene factors. Why do you keep pretending that I am an absolutist in this and focused only on social life as defined by the athletic scene? I like lots of things, one of which is the athletic scene. Heck, I think that all of these things should be considered as at least one aspect of the non-academic life is likely to have some importance for the individual student looking for a college.</p>
<p>I also don't see where I "made an interesting assumption that going to college sporting events as a spectator is how most people want to or choose to spend their free time." Can you point me to where I made that statement??? It happens to be the theme of thread, but I completely accept that there are different activities for different people. I also believe that some folks who previously have never directly experienced major college sporting events might also find them to be a lot of fun.</p>
<p>"I think most who have sampled both the college and professional experiences in these towns would conclude that there is a difference with the pro environments usually larger and cruder. "</p>
<p>Is it ok that some people care about neither? I have no interest in going to a Chicago Bears game, and the *only reason I'd ever go to a NU game is simply because dh / I are alums. If we weren't otherwise NU alums, we wouldn't ever choose to go up to Evanston for, say, an NU/U of I or NU/Wisc or NU/Mich or NU/PennSt game.</p>
<p>Hawkette, you had said:<br>
"Going back to your comment earlier about students understanding the athletic life of a college because they went to events in high school, I would probably not agree that all students accurately appreciate the differences. For example, if a student went to a prep school in the northeast, it is quite possible, maybe even likely, that they have never been to a large, nationally relevant college sporting event."</p>
<p>I think it's quite possible, maybe even likely, that the vast majority of hs seniors ANYWHERE in this country (not just prep schools in the northeast) have never been to a large, nationally relevant college sporting event. Yet I bet they have some idea whether they think that cheering on a football or basketball team when they go to college is something that they personally enjoy, because a) most high schools have sports and b) there's the world of professional sports.</p>
<p>"I also believe that some folks who previously have never directly experienced major college sporting events might also find them to be a lot of fun."</p>
<p>Sure. And some of the Reed folks who've never been in a sorority / fraternity might also find them to be a lot of fun, too. What's the point? Saying that therefore HYP "should" focus on facilitating major college sporting events because some of their students <em>might</em> find it fun is like saying that Reed "should" focus on facilitating a Greek system because some of their students <em>might</em> find it fun. HYP clearly doesn't see major college sporting events as part of their desired mission for themselves; Reed clearly doesn't see a Greek-life campus as part of their desired mission for themselves. So be it.</p>