Hopkins vs Duke

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both great colleges but completely different.

Duke is suburban with a large campus and is D1 athletics

JHU has a very nice campus but its very small and the surrounding area is UChicago-tier, think planet of the apes, also its D3 which completely changes the campus social vibe

Duke has smart students but are more "preppy" and feels like a lot of northeast kids transplanted into the south and the D1 sports are a big thing

JHU has equally smart students but are more academic and the D3 athletics is more of a social scene thing than the big time sports that you will find at Duke

JHU was a school that most academically focused students and their families will like but will invariably go to can they rationalize the safety risks, out of the T20 schools, UChicago and JHU are distinguished by their third world surrounding areas, Columbia is fast approaching this too and likely will not change until another Giuliani or Bloomberg is mayor (the current mayor seems like a nice guy but just as bad as the last mayor despite)

Hopkins has d1 men’s and women’s lacrosse. Hopkins is in semi suburban North Baltimore.

Yes, but D1 lacrosse is nothing compared to D1 football or basketball. A single home football or basketball game at Duke probably generates more $s than all of Hopkins sports combined and accumulated over a 10 year period and often subsidizes the other men's and women's programs.

D1 lacrosse is a niche sport, its more a club compared to football or basketball, especially at Duke.

JHU campus itself is very nice, among the better small campuses. But to call the surrounding area suburban is very misleading, the immediate surrounding area is at best characterized as sketchy, walk a few blocks and you are in third world war zone conditions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

Like Stanford and Notre Dame?

[Anonymous]

Go for Duke. Better campus better environment and better public policy program. Hopkins is surrounded by sad parts of Baltimore city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins has wonderful public policy resources, CS theoretical research, and it's very close to DC. They are also opening a center in conjunction with Amazon Science on AI which might be a good fit for your kid.

That’s right! So you can take lectures from the Real Housewives from Potamac, Dr Wendy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

I attended Duke on athletic scholarship and was recruited everywhere. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and UVA all impressed me as very rigorous academic schools. At Duke, a future NFL Super Bowl player was in my honors calculus class, an African American athlete who was a superb student from rural North Carolina. I was in an honors program, finishing magna cum laude with highest honors. Being from a very poor single mother home, I was motivated by a desire to crush effete types with your attitude. I did even better in graduate school. Look, anyone who has been a top level athlete is well aware of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the industrial sports complex. But to suggest Duke is without rigor is absurd. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

I attended Duke on athletic scholarship and was recruited everywhere. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and UVA all impressed me as very rigorous academic schools. At Duke, a future NFL Super Bowl player was in my honors calculus class, an African American athlete who was a superb student from rural North Carolina. I was in an honors program, finishing magna cum laude with highest honors. Being from a very poor single mother home, I was motivated by a desire to crush effete types with your attitude. I did even better in graduate school. Look, anyone who has been a top level athlete is well aware of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the industrial sports complex. But to suggest Duke is without rigor is absurd. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

It's true that schools with D1 sports team tends to have less rigorous courses that all the athletes take. It's does not mean that the athletes are dumb, although they generally are dumber than the non-athletes, but also that their sports schedule keeps them from focusing on school.

Duke, Stanford, UVA are considered less rigorous than their peers w/o Power 5 athletics. Stanford is considered far less rigorous than MIT, Caltech, Princeton, U. Chicago. Duke is considered less rigorous than Hopkins/U. Chicago/Cornell. UVA is considered less rigorous than Carnegie Mellon/UC San Diego.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

I attended Duke on athletic scholarship and was recruited everywhere. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and UVA all impressed me as very rigorous academic schools. At Duke, a future NFL Super Bowl player was in my honors calculus class, an African American athlete who was a superb student from rural North Carolina. I was in an honors program, finishing magna cum laude with highest honors. Being from a very poor single mother home, I was motivated by a desire to crush effete types with your attitude. I did even better in graduate school. Look, anyone who has been a top level athlete is well aware of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the industrial sports complex. But to suggest Duke is without rigor is absurd. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

It's true that schools with D1 sports team tends to have less rigorous courses that all the athletes take. It's does not mean that the athletes are dumb, although they generally are dumber than the non-athletes, but also that their sports schedule keeps them from focusing on school.

Duke, Stanford, UVA are considered less rigorous than their peers w/o Power 5 athletics. Stanford is considered far less rigorous than MIT, Caltech, Princeton, U. Chicago. Duke is considered less rigorous than Hopkins/U. Chicago/Cornell. UVA is considered less rigorous than Carnegie Mellon/UC San Diego.

I don't think you know what your are talking about in terms of "rigor" - yes there are some lesser qualified athletes from the revenue sports at Duke. But the same at Princeton. I know - I was recruited there and my daughter graduated from there. I am certain as a 2400 SAT scorer she didn't need a break on admission but her being on the crew team clearly helped. Don't let the lack of Ivy League scholarships fool you - athletes get a break.

And again - I don't think you understand the NCAA. Basketball is never a problem. If a school can't shove three players through each year - and they do - without impacting the university writ large they are not going about it the right way. Heck - 5 star players get 5 star dedicated tutors. And at Duke there is not as much of a need for substantial academic help in basketball. Grant Hill by way of example could have succeeded at any school in the country. Not that there are a lot of Grant Hills around but those types do go to Duke. Football is the ten ton elephant in the room. 25 players on scholarship each year (they lose some due to attrition - with 85 scholarship players in total). Football - even at the Ivy League schools - means there has to be majors and courses to support the often lesser qualified students football attracts. And going for the all conference (as opposed to All State) football players with better academic credentials doesn't work at the Div. 1 football ranks. The guys are physically overwhelmed (look at UConn the last three years - a team with a lot of marginal players who must feel absolutely beat to a pulp) and to expect great academic outcomes in that situation is unrealistic. And low talent teams lose lots of money. But football doesn't impact the fabric of the average student at Duke much, other than relatively few go to games. Football buys access to a Power 5 conference, which in turn rains money and exposure to a place like Duke. Pick any other ACC school which offers life prospects much in excess of the average student out there - UVa, Notre Dame, GA Tech (a very rigorous engineering school), UNC, and BC and so on. You can do well from these schools, and today the key is value. If you can go to one of them relatively cheap, they have to be considered strongly notwithstanding the existence of a football team. Johns Hopkins is the right choice for students with matching interests. But basing that decision on the apparent lack of academic rigor is absurd. The Duke - JHU decision comes down to value and matching interests - it depends on the student.


Let me give you a rundown of my teammates - two went to Duke Medical School, one went to Chicago medical school - one is chairman of the biology department at a top 25 university, another the senior engineer for a global semiconductor company. Two went to Harvard Law School. What matters today is not your perception of "rigor" - as if it somehow matters - but rather the value that a school represents. It is all about value today and not prestige. Duke has one of the highest ROI's in the country. This is so because it is an intensively social as well as intellectual place, and its network places an outsize number in finance - not something I think is necessarily desirable but Duke is the farthest thing from a place like Oberlin - one of the worst education values in the country (however, even Oberlin can work for some) . There is actually a lot not to like about Duke (I was poor and learned that upper middle class people and higher generally damage the prospects of the poor), but it still remains a good choice for some. The history of Duke is one of the most phenomenal, yet brash and arrogant stories in American history. For some students it works, as that legacy clearly imprints on the school even today. JHU is a relative upstart too, with a big and bold bet on the life sciences and health - it pays to appreciate that before matriculating.

I might add that my brother - as tough of an athlete you would ever want to see - majored in math in UNC. Phi Beta Kappa. Econ Phd from a top 10 school on a fellowship and finished the Phd in four years. Multiple All American in his sport. Very frank about UNC's idiotic mistakes - which where driven by some very real racial and social gaps in the state but for which there is no excuse - but to suggest his math major was without rigor is again absurd. Would he have made it at MIT? Sure, but not easy. University of Chicago's math department wanted him. Money was an issue. Would he have been one of the best in the nation in his sport? Surely not. Like anything else, you have to compete with the big dogs to know just how much you must work. You can't be any more successful, either academically or financially than he is - world known in his investment and economic field. So he exemplifies the kind of match I am talking about. A teammate of his called me last week - a world class athlete and again one of those without the skills of the mainstream students at the school. He told me he was a terrible student (1.7 GPA his first two years) but during his last two years my brother taught him how to study. He went on to NC State to get a graduate engineering degree. If the measure of a school is to develop people - as opposed to evaluating notions of prestige - the school - the poster child of big time athletic cheating in academics - was an enormous success.

[Anonymous]

Duke would be a lot more fun. Many have a love-hate relationship with Hopkins. They appreciate the rigor but their mental health suffers.

[Anonymous]

the only people on the planet who would choose hopkins over duke are 60-year-old blue jay lacrosse alums who grew up in baltimore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

I attended Duke on athletic scholarship and was recruited everywhere. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and UVA all impressed me as very rigorous academic schools. At Duke, a future NFL Super Bowl player was in my honors calculus class, an African American athlete who was a superb student from rural North Carolina. I was in an honors program, finishing magna cum laude with highest honors. Being from a very poor single mother home, I was motivated by a desire to crush effete types with your attitude. I did even better in graduate school. Look, anyone who has been a top level athlete is well aware of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the industrial sports complex. But to suggest Duke is without rigor is absurd. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

It's true that schools with D1 sports team tends to have less rigorous courses that all the athletes take. It's does not mean that the athletes are dumb, although they generally are dumber than the non-athletes, but also that their sports schedule keeps them from focusing on school.

Duke, Stanford, UVA are considered less rigorous than their peers w/o Power 5 athletics. Stanford is considered far less rigorous than MIT, Caltech, Princeton, U. Chicago. Duke is considered less rigorous than Hopkins/U. Chicago/Cornell. UVA is considered less rigorous than Carnegie Mellon/UC San Diego.

I don't think you know what your are talking about in terms of "rigor" - yes there are some lesser qualified athletes from the revenue sports at Duke. But the same at Princeton. I know - I was recruited there and my daughter graduated from there. I am certain as a 2400 SAT scorer she didn't need a break on admission but her being on the crew team clearly helped. Don't let the lack of Ivy League scholarships fool you - athletes get a break.

And again - I don't think you understand the NCAA. Basketball is never a problem. If a school can't shove three players through each year - and they do - without impacting the university writ large they are not going about it the right way. Heck - 5 star players get 5 star dedicated tutors. And at Duke there is not as much of a need for substantial academic help in basketball. Grant Hill by way of example could have succeeded at any school in the country. Not that there are a lot of Grant Hills around but those types do go to Duke. Football is the ten ton elephant in the room. 25 players on scholarship each year (they lose some due to attrition - with 85 scholarship players in total). Football - even at the Ivy League schools - means there has to be majors and courses to support the often lesser qualified students football attracts. And going for the all conference (as opposed to All State) football players with better academic credentials doesn't work at the Div. 1 football ranks. The guys are physically overwhelmed (look at UConn the last three years - a team with a lot of marginal players who must feel absolutely beat to a pulp) and to expect great academic outcomes in that situation is unrealistic. And low talent teams lose lots of money. But football doesn't impact the fabric of the average student at Duke much, other than relatively few go to games. Football buys access to a Power 5 conference, which in turn rains money and exposure to a place like Duke. Pick any other ACC school which offers life prospects much in excess of the average student out there - UVa, Notre Dame, GA Tech (a very rigorous engineering school), UNC, and BC and so on. You can do well from these schools, and today the key is value. If you can go to one of them relatively cheap, they have to be considered strongly notwithstanding the existence of a football team. Johns Hopkins is the right choice for students with matching interests. But basing that decision on the apparent lack of academic rigor is absurd. The Duke - JHU decision comes down to value and matching interests - it depends on the student.


Let me give you a rundown of my teammates - two went to Duke Medical School, one went to Chicago medical school - one is chairman of the biology department at a top 25 university, another the senior engineer for a global semiconductor company. Two went to Harvard Law School. What matters today is not your perception of "rigor" - as if it somehow matters - but rather the value that a school represents. It is all about value today and not prestige. Duke has one of the highest ROI's in the country. This is so because it is an intensively social as well as intellectual place, and its network places an outsize number in finance - not something I think is necessarily desirable but Duke is the farthest thing from a place like Oberlin - one of the worst education values in the country (however, even Oberlin can work for some) . There is actually a lot not to like about Duke (I was poor and learned that upper middle class people and higher generally damage the prospects of the poor), but it still remains a good choice for some. The history of Duke is one of the most phenomenal, yet brash and arrogant stories in American history. For some students it works, as that legacy clearly imprints on the school even today. JHU is a relative upstart too, with a big and bold bet on the life sciences and health - it pays to appreciate that before matriculating.

I might add that my brother - as tough of an athlete you would ever want to see - majored in math in UNC. Phi Beta Kappa. Econ Phd from a top 10 school on a fellowship and finished the Phd in four years. Multiple All American in his sport. Very frank about UNC's idiotic mistakes - which where driven by some very real racial and social gaps in the state but for which there is no excuse - but to suggest his math major was without rigor is again absurd. Would he have made it at MIT? Sure, but not easy. University of Chicago's math department wanted him. Money was an issue. Would he have been one of the best in the nation in his sport? Surely not. Like anything else, you have to compete with the big dogs to know just how much you must work. You can't be any more successful, either academically or financially than he is - world known in his investment and economic field. So he exemplifies the kind of match I am talking about. A teammate of his called me last week - a world class athlete and again one of those without the skills of the mainstream students at the school. He told me he was a terrible student (1.7 GPA his first two years) but during his last two years my brother taught him how to study. He went on to NC State to get a graduate engineering degree. If the measure of a school is to develop people - as opposed to evaluating notions of prestige - the school - the poster child of big time athletic cheating in academics - was an enormous success.

No one is saying intelligent athletes don't exist.

They are saying that athletes in basketball and football at schools in the Power 5 tend to be weaker academically. The sports programs brings in a lot of money, so admissions looks the other way.

UNC literally made up fake classes for their basketball players to "attend". Most schools don't go that far, but they provide plenty of easy (BS) majors and easy (BS) courses that all the athletes take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Duke would be a lot more fun. Many have a love-hate relationship with Hopkins. They appreciate the rigor but their mental health suffers.

If you aren’t in rigorous STEM classes or on competitive professional track, why would mental health suffer? Half of the stress is caused by kids and parents, colleges often get bad reputation with little fault of their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

I attended Duke on athletic scholarship and was recruited everywhere. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and UVA all impressed me as very rigorous academic schools. At Duke, a future NFL Super Bowl player was in my honors calculus class, an African American athlete who was a superb student from rural North Carolina. I was in an honors program, finishing magna cum laude with highest honors. Being from a very poor single mother home, I was motivated by a desire to crush effete types with your attitude. I did even better in graduate school. Look, anyone who has been a top level athlete is well aware of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the industrial sports complex. But to suggest Duke is without rigor is absurd. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

It's true that schools with D1 sports team tends to have less rigorous courses that all the athletes take. It's does not mean that the athletes are dumb, although they generally are dumber than the non-athletes, but also that their sports schedule keeps them from focusing on school.

Duke, Stanford, UVA are considered less rigorous than their peers w/o Power 5 athletics. Stanford is considered far less rigorous than MIT, Caltech, Princeton, U. Chicago. Duke is considered less rigorous than Hopkins/U. Chicago/Cornell. UVA is considered less rigorous than Carnegie Mellon/UC San Diego.

Stanford’s engineering school is top ranked for undergrad and graduate in many areas. The engineering school major requirements typically require more credit units and the curriculum is quite rigorous - I have a child in the undergrad engineering school and it is not easy. But I have heard that a lot of athletes major in “science, technology, and society” which is considered one of the easier majors with fewer required credits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

I attended Duke on athletic scholarship and was recruited everywhere. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and UVA all impressed me as very rigorous academic schools. At Duke, a future NFL Super Bowl player was in my honors calculus class, an African American athlete who was a superb student from rural North Carolina. I was in an honors program, finishing magna cum laude with highest honors. Being from a very poor single mother home, I was motivated by a desire to crush effete types with your attitude. I did even better in graduate school. Look, anyone who has been a top level athlete is well aware of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the industrial sports complex. But to suggest Duke is without rigor is absurd. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

It's true that schools with D1 sports team tends to have less rigorous courses that all the athletes take. It's does not mean that the athletes are dumb, although they generally are dumber than the non-athletes, but also that their sports schedule keeps them from focusing on school.

Duke, Stanford, UVA are considered less rigorous than their peers w/o Power 5 athletics. Stanford is considered far less rigorous than MIT, Caltech, Princeton, U. Chicago. Duke is considered less rigorous than Hopkins/U. Chicago/Cornell. UVA is considered less rigorous than Carnegie Mellon/UC San Diego.

Stanford’s engineering school is top ranked for undergrad and graduate in many areas. The engineering school major requirements typically require more credit units and the curriculum is quite rigorous - I have a child in the undergrad engineering school and it is not easy. But I have heard that a lot of athletes major in “science, technology, and society” which is considered one of the easier majors with fewer required credits.

No doubt Stanford Engineering is rigorous, but not to the same extent as MIT and Caltech (or apparently even Berkeley, as Berkeley weeds out heavily).

And athletes are not usually taking Engineering majors. As an overall school, Stanford is less rigorous because there are many easy classes and majors students can pick to have an easy ride.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins.
Serious schools don’t have space for elite D1 basketball or D1 football. By nature and generally speaking those teams are too professional to pass rigorous classes. It’s a red flag regarding rigorous standards or lack there of.

I attended Duke on athletic scholarship and was recruited everywhere. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and UVA all impressed me as very rigorous academic schools. At Duke, a future NFL Super Bowl player was in my honors calculus class, an African American athlete who was a superb student from rural North Carolina. I was in an honors program, finishing magna cum laude with highest honors. Being from a very poor single mother home, I was motivated by a desire to crush effete types with your attitude. I did even better in graduate school. Look, anyone who has been a top level athlete is well aware of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the industrial sports complex. But to suggest Duke is without rigor is absurd. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

It's true that schools with D1 sports team tends to have less rigorous courses that all the athletes take. It's does not mean that the athletes are dumb, although they generally are dumber than the non-athletes, but also that their sports schedule keeps them from focusing on school.

Duke, Stanford, UVA are considered less rigorous than their peers w/o Power 5 athletics. Stanford is considered far less rigorous than MIT, Caltech, Princeton, U. Chicago. Duke is considered less rigorous than Hopkins/U. Chicago/Cornell. UVA is considered less rigorous than Carnegie Mellon/UC San Diego.

I don't think you know what your are talking about in terms of "rigor" - yes there are some lesser qualified athletes from the revenue sports at Duke. But the same at Princeton. I know - I was recruited there and my daughter graduated from there. I am certain as a 2400 SAT scorer she didn't need a break on admission but her being on the crew team clearly helped. Don't let the lack of Ivy League scholarships fool you - athletes get a break.

And again - I don't think you understand the NCAA. Basketball is never a problem. If a school can't shove three players through each year - and they do - without impacting the university writ large they are not going about it the right way. Heck - 5 star players get 5 star dedicated tutors. And at Duke there is not as much of a need for substantial academic help in basketball. Grant Hill by way of example could have succeeded at any school in the country. Not that there are a lot of Grant Hills around but those types do go to Duke. Football is the ten ton elephant in the room. 25 players on scholarship each year (they lose some due to attrition - with 85 scholarship players in total). Football - even at the Ivy League schools - means there has to be majors and courses to support the often lesser qualified students football attracts. And going for the all conference (as opposed to All State) football players with better academic credentials doesn't work at the Div. 1 football ranks. The guys are physically overwhelmed (look at UConn the last three years - a team with a lot of marginal players who must feel absolutely beat to a pulp) and to expect great academic outcomes in that situation is unrealistic. And low talent teams lose lots of money. But football doesn't impact the fabric of the average student at Duke much, other than relatively few go to games. Football buys access to a Power 5 conference, which in turn rains money and exposure to a place like Duke. Pick any other ACC school which offers life prospects much in excess of the average student out there - UVa, Notre Dame, GA Tech (a very rigorous engineering school), UNC, and BC and so on. You can do well from these schools, and today the key is value. If you can go to one of them relatively cheap, they have to be considered strongly notwithstanding the existence of a football team. Johns Hopkins is the right choice for students with matching interests. But basing that decision on the apparent lack of academic rigor is absurd. The Duke - JHU decision comes down to value and matching interests - it depends on the student.


Let me give you a rundown of my teammates - two went to Duke Medical School, one went to Chicago medical school - one is chairman of the biology department at a top 25 university, another the senior engineer for a global semiconductor company. Two went to Harvard Law School. What matters today is not your perception of "rigor" - as if it somehow matters - but rather the value that a school represents. It is all about value today and not prestige. Duke has one of the highest ROI's in the country. This is so because it is an intensively social as well as intellectual place, and its network places an outsize number in finance - not something I think is necessarily desirable but Duke is the farthest thing from a place like Oberlin - one of the worst education values in the country (however, even Oberlin can work for some) . There is actually a lot not to like about Duke (I was poor and learned that upper middle class people and higher generally damage the prospects of the poor), but it still remains a good choice for some. The history of Duke is one of the most phenomenal, yet brash and arrogant stories in American history. For some students it works, as that legacy clearly imprints on the school even today. JHU is a relative upstart too, with a big and bold bet on the life sciences and health - it pays to appreciate that before matriculating.

I might add that my brother - as tough of an athlete you would ever want to see - majored in math in UNC. Phi Beta Kappa. Econ Phd from a top 10 school on a fellowship and finished the Phd in four years. Multiple All American in his sport. Very frank about UNC's idiotic mistakes - which where driven by some very real racial and social gaps in the state but for which there is no excuse - but to suggest his math major was without rigor is again absurd. Would he have made it at MIT? Sure, but not easy. University of Chicago's math department wanted him. Money was an issue. Would he have been one of the best in the nation in his sport? Surely not. Like anything else, you have to compete with the big dogs to know just how much you must work. You can't be any more successful, either academically or financially than he is - world known in his investment and economic field. So he exemplifies the kind of match I am talking about. A teammate of his called me last week - a world class athlete and again one of those without the skills of the mainstream students at the school. He told me he was a terrible student (1.7 GPA his first two years) but during his last two years my brother taught him how to study. He went on to NC State to get a graduate engineering degree. If the measure of a school is to develop people - as opposed to evaluating notions of prestige - the school - the poster child of big time athletic cheating in academics - was an enormous success.

No one is saying intelligent athletes don't exist.

They are saying that athletes in basketball and football at schools in the Power 5 tend to be weaker academically. The sports programs brings in a lot of money, so admissions looks the other way.

UNC literally made up fake classes for their basketball players to "attend". Most schools don't go that far, but they provide plenty of easy (BS) majors and easy (BS) courses that all the athletes take.

Love the post from the Duke athlete. Thanks for sharing your story and your brother’s.

Immediate PP, you are off on a weird tangent. The fact that Duke or Stanford offers much better athletic viewing opportunities for students than Hopkins does not mean that students are unable to get a world-class education there. There are top professors, courses, and peers that will challenge every student. To suggest otherwise is silly.