Are DII and DIII sports a big scam to get parents to
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Anonymous
Towson tuition/room/board is $25K in state. My kid's first choice small no name LAC is 52K, with an automatic 25K merit award for his stats. The 2K difference is tuition is worth it to me because I think he'll enjoy continuing to play, and learn more with smaller classes. As a parent of a kid who is looking at no name schools anyway, due to stats, I haven't seen tuition/room/board at 70K anywhere, and every school we've looked at offers merit to the vast majority of applicants. |
Anonymous
They get jobs outside of sports. That's what college is for. Even the D1 athletes. Are you just thinking of football and basketball? Because college isn't a road to pro for MOST sports. You go to college because you're getting an education. Every adult D1 athlete I know has a career that has nothing to do with their college sport: designers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, and writers. The only D1 adult I know who is coaching professionally was gold medal Olympian too. |
Anonymous
| You sound bitter. What's the problem here? D2 does have scholarships. And D3 schools absolutely and give generous financial packages in the form of mostly grants to gifted athletes. Why does this bother you so much? UChicago, Hopkins, Cal Poly, Bowdoin, Carnegie Mellon are all D3 schools who love their athletes. Get over yourself. |
Anonymous
You're assuming that D2 and D3 schools are not high quality. Have you seen the list? You'd be surprised. |
Anonymous
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D3: UChicago, Claremont school, Bowdoin, Haverford, Hopkins, Kenyon, MIT, Oberlin, Oxy, Pomona, Rensselaer, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, Williams...
Yeah, these schools really suck. |
Anonymous
| Why don't you find new facebook friends? |
Anonymous
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/17/athletes-are-more-likely-be-find-employment-be-engaged-work-study-suggests |
Anonymous
+1. Also, not sure why some people don't understand that not all kids want to go to a huge brand name public school. Lots of kids prefer the opportunities available at smaller schools and the curriculum structures at LACs. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
| I went D3 primarily for economic reasons (I got a merit scholarship to a SLAC that made it cheaper than UMD). The fact that I got to continue playing soccer and lacrosse was gravy (also, I probably wouldn't have made the team at UMD). |
Anonymous
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My kid could play his sport at a D1 school but would be in a mid-major with not a lot of academic prestige. Or he could play D3 at an elite SLAC. That's a no-brainer for me.
I know you weren't referring to the elite SLACs, but I do think there are some other D3 schools that are academically superior to D1 schools. Maybe a kid might not be able to get into these schools without the sports hook and that's why? |
Anonymous
| If a kid decides that he can't handle the academics AND the sports once they are in a D3 school, then they quit the sport and they are still at the school. Not always possible if they are at a d1. |
Anonymous
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OP's (and some PP's) opinion is rather half-baked in that it seems based on a fair bit of misinformation.
First, there seems to be some misinformation about the benefits of being a D1 athlete. There seems to be an impression that D1 athletes are getting a huge discount on the cost of their education in return for their athletic contributions, but that is true only for a small percentage of athletes. Many D1 athletes are playing without athletic scholarships or with only nominal ones. And only a tiny percentage of D1 athletes go on to play professionally, so it's not like they are making a direct investment in their future careers by playing sports. So if one is going to make an argument about the "big scam" of college athletics, it should be applied across the board, not just to D2 and D3. Second, OP seems to be entirely unaware of the trade-offs that most college students and their families make between colleges' name recognition, quality, aid offerings, acceptance rate, location, and "fit" and a particular student's stats, interests, and ability to pay. Sure, maybe on the face of it, it makes no sense for a student to turn down an opportunity to play D1 sport at, say, the University of Texas in order to play D3 at, say, Kalamazoo College. But you don't know how much merit aid Kalamazoo offered, how big the athletic scholarship at Texas was, whether the student wants a small school environment, whether the student wants to play at the D1 level (which can take over a kid's entire college life), whether the kid had the grades/stats to get into a more highly ranked D3 school, whether the kid wants to go to school in the south, and what the family can afford to pay. And you don't know what the other options were. Sure, maybe the kid could have played at an in-state university. But maybe Flagship State U isn't recruiting this student, for whatever reason, and so the only real in-state option is Podunk U, which the student doesn't want to go to. Maybe the kid doesn't *want* to play D1 at all, but thinks going to a D3 school offers the best of both worlds--a chance to keep playing but still have a good college life. These are decisions that many families make, even without sports in the mix. My DS1 is not an athlete, but we faced similar trade-offs. He wanted to go to a small school, not a large one. He had stats that put him in contention for admission to elite SLACs. But most elite SLACs don't offer merit aid, and we don't qualify for much financial aid and can't afford to pay $60k per year. So he focused on SLACs that are a step down from elite, that we knew were likely to offer merit aid to a student like him. In the end, he had offers from 3 SLACs that brought our out-of-pocket cost to $25k-$35k per year. He also was admitted to our large state flagship, which would have cost us $28k per year. He ended up choosing one of the SLACs that costs us $32k. We are willing to spend an extra $4k per year for him to go to the small school that he prefers. Which leads us to the third issue, which is that OP seems not to know how much in-state college universities cost these days. In-state cost of attendance at UMD-CP is $26k. At UVA, $30k. At W&M, $34k. At VaTech, $25k. Fourth, most high school athletes aren't good enough to play D1 sports anywhere. So if they want to keep playing, D3 is their only option. And why shouldn't they keep playing if they want to? Someone (OP?) above argues that sports have to end sometime, so it's not worth it to play D3. But then why play in high school either? Sports have to end some time, so why start playing at all? The answer is that for some students sports *are* worth it. They like playing and want to keep doing it. And there are proven benefits--playing college athletics helps some kids stay more focused, but also helps tap many kids into alumni networks that can be very valuable when it comes time to find a job. IOW, when you see a D3 athlete, you have no idea what her circumstances are. You don't know if she was offered a D1 scholarship. You don't know whether she was good enough to play at the D1 level at all. You don't know how much merit/financial aid the D3 school has given her. You don't know how much it would have cost her to attend her in-state option. You don't know what her grades and test scores were and whether "better" schools would have admitted her. You don't know why she wants to continue playing sports or why she wanted to go to this particular SLAC, or any SLAC. You don't know what her parents can afford to pay. You don't know whether playing that sport gives her or will give her tangible, valuable benefits. IOW, you don't know anything at all. Yet that doesn't seem to keep you from offering your opinion? |
Anonymous
| I know an athlete who attended a well regarded private then was recruited to a D1 school that I'm positive DCUM would look down upon (academically inferior to this board). This student was not Harvard caliber in any way, so why would people assume that they would or should go to an elite school? There's a different path for everyone to college (or not college at all). OP is just being mean and judgemental. |
Anonymous
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OK, I'm going to admit that on some level I send my kids to private colleges because I think they will make better friends and marry within our own socioeconomic class. They love their sports at their D3 schools because they get to see their friends from summer camp, their friends from Junior Year abroad, etc. They get to visit other schools, to travel during the year and to keep up with people.
None of my kids are probably going to be brilliant scholars, but they are happy, nice, well-rounded kids. Doing sports keeps them focused, helps with time management and helps them develop people skills. If they get hauled in to talk to the coach about their grades, it seems to carry more weight than when my wife or I yell at them. Sometimes the coach can intervene with a professor if my kid is struggling and he even has study halls for students who need a bit of extra supervision. I prefer a small school where there's a bit of supervision and sports seems like a better use of their time and keeps them away from recreational drug use, alcohol abuse, etc. Fire away. I'm sure you all think I'm an awful person. |