Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 09:29     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:My DS is a first year at a NESCAC that has a high proportion of student athletes. His experience sounds exactly the opposite of the PP's son at Williams. My kid was always actively disinterested in sports so I worried a bit about this but it doesn't seem to be an issue at all. He's very happy and it doesn't seem to impact his experience at all. He has begun to take a slightly greater interest in playing and watching sports socially, but doesn't feel any pressure around it. He actually got offered a spot on a club sport team but decided not to do it.

I think it helps that his school doesn't have Greek life and it has a reputation for being a place with a lot of nice kids.


That's great. I wonder if it's just a school by school thing. I had a similar experience to PP's kid and thought that's just what happens when half your hall is hanging out with their teammates and the other half are either hanging out with an affinity group or with people they know already. Those first weeks, when your friends are your roommates and people in you hall get harder when most already have a group.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 09:29     Subject: Re:does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
An aspect that I enjoyed at a large university but did not experience at my decent sized rural LAC was the option to be anonymous at times.

At the large university, I liked that I could meet new people each day--or that I could be with a group of friends & acquaintances. Experiencing a lot of diversity allowed me to grow and to experience perspectives that I did not encounter at my LAC (which was rich, white, preppy, cliquey, and very athletic with social activities centered around drinking). I simply did not need to be around others who were just like me in order to feel safe, secure, and comfortable; I enjoyed that excitement of being able to grow each day through new & sometimes uncomfortable encounters. Options. Lots of options & differences (diversity) made the large university environment exciting to me.

OP: At several LACs--especially some well known SLACs--the term NARP is used in a non-complementary fashion. NARP = non-athlete, regular person. (Very commonly used at Middlebury College, for example. And I have read and have been told that it is not an uncommon term at other NESCACs as well.)

To be sure, there are sub-groups and cliques at all schools large & small. The difference is in the size. There are more options at larger schools and, if commonality is what one seeks, there are more individuals within any subgroup with which one prefers to identify & associate.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 09:24     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:It ain’t easy getting recruited at any NESCAC school, I would go as far as to say that the top recruits are mid/low D1 talent but focused on the academic outturn. NESCAC athletics is probably the strongest D3 conference across the majority of sports.


This is true. My DD was told she was the number one recruit by several NESCACS. Wound up not passing the pre-read at her top-choice and committing to a highly academic D1. A top 20 D1 was able to admit academically while the NESCACs were not. It was surprising.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 09:09     Subject: Re:does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:DS was a recruited athlete at Williams. He certainly found that athletes were a strong social presence on campus, though I don't think it amounted to BMOC domination. However, what's important to note is that cliques were a huge presence among the non-athletes - the ones that he mentioned were the super-rich kids, the super-woke kids, and the minorities (the last two not necessarily being the same). If you're not an athlete and you don't fit into one of the other cliques, it will be socially isolating. If you are an athlete and you have to drop the sport because of an injury or you're tired of it or you need to focus on academics, then you will be socially isolated if you don't fit into any of the non-athletic cliques. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that this happens at other small schools, too.


Ugh. Sounds awful all the way around.


PP- I agree with this and my son is at another school.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 09:02     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Williams grad. I felt out of place NOT being an athlete. Especially true freshman year when the teams had been together already for two weeks. I started a sport just to try to make some friends. Honestly it was a bit hard.


If I may ask, where do you wish that you had attended college/university if you were accepted to any school of interest to you ?

I ask because I think that Williams College deserves its top ranking among LACs, and I am attracted to many aspects of the school, but I also attended a rural LAC and really regret the experience (even though I was very athletic).



I should have gone to somewhere closer to DC, with more options than drinking for fun. Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore? I was rejected from Princeton. The rural aspect of Williams has some shades of Deliverance in the winter. It can be pretty isolating without a strong friend group.


Thank you for responding to my question.

I, too, was rejected by Princeton and I wish that I had attended another school with more social options that did not involve drinking.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 08:46     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Williams grad. I felt out of place NOT being an athlete. Especially true freshman year when the teams had been together already for two weeks. I started a sport just to try to make some friends. Honestly it was a bit hard.


If I may ask, where do you wish that you had attended college/university if you were accepted to any school of interest to you ?

I ask because I think that Williams College deserves its top ranking among LACs, and I am attracted to many aspects of the school, but I also attended a rural LAC and really regret the experience (even though I was very athletic).



I should have gone to somewhere closer to DC, with more options than drinking for fun. Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore? I was rejected from Princeton. The rural aspect of Williams has some shades of Deliverance in the winter. It can be pretty isolating without a strong friend group.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 06:18     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
My DS is a first year at a NESCAC that has a high proportion of student athletes. His experience sounds exactly the opposite of the PP's son at Williams. My kid was always actively disinterested in sports so I worried a bit about this but it doesn't seem to be an issue at all. He's very happy and it doesn't seem to impact his experience at all. He has begun to take a slightly greater interest in playing and watching sports socially, but doesn't feel any pressure around it. He actually got offered a spot on a club sport team but decided not to do it.

I think it helps that his school doesn't have Greek life and it has a reputation for being a place with a lot of nice kids.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 05:53     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
My step sister went to Bowdoin and didn’t play a sport. She transferred out.
Anonymous
Post 01/27/2023 00:41     Subject: Re:does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:DS was a recruited athlete at Williams. He certainly found that athletes were a strong social presence on campus, though I don't think it amounted to BMOC domination. However, what's important to note is that cliques were a huge presence among the non-athletes - the ones that he mentioned were the super-rich kids, the super-woke kids, and the minorities (the last two not necessarily being the same). If you're not an athlete and you don't fit into one of the other cliques, it will be socially isolating. If you are an athlete and you have to drop the sport because of an injury or you're tired of it or you need to focus on academics, then you will be socially isolated if you don't fit into any of the non-athletic cliques. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that this happens at other small schools, too.


Ugh. Sounds awful all the way around.
Anonymous
Post 01/26/2023 21:21     Subject: Re:does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
DS was a recruited athlete at Williams. He certainly found that athletes were a strong social presence on campus, though I don't think it amounted to BMOC domination. However, what's important to note is that cliques were a huge presence among the non-athletes - the ones that he mentioned were the super-rich kids, the super-woke kids, and the minorities (the last two not necessarily being the same). If you're not an athlete and you don't fit into one of the other cliques, it will be socially isolating. If you are an athlete and you have to drop the sport because of an injury or you're tired of it or you need to focus on academics, then you will be socially isolated if you don't fit into any of the non-athletic cliques. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that this happens at other small schools, too.
Anonymous
Post 01/26/2023 20:37     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Academics definitely dominate at LACs. And the proper term is "LACs," not "SLACs."


Amherst 31% of students are varsity athletes, Bowdoin is 36%. Similar numbers at other NESCAC schools. Definitely a sporty set of schools, and has students in sports at percentages similar to HS. Big state schools by comparison are low single digits.



I am well acquainted with LACs, private National Universities, and public National Universities. The above poster is correct regarding percentage of athletes at small versus large schools. I noticed another difference. At LACs the athletes form cliques that often dominate the social scene. LAC athletes are akin to the BMOC (big man on campus) similar to high school. The large university D 1 scholarship athletes that I knew, although confident when competing in their respective sport, were humble and aware that they could lose their scholarship. I hesitate to use the word fear--or afraid--but they were very aware of the need to remain healthy and to perform at an extremely high level in their sport.

I have read several parents claim that their D3 athlete could have gone D1. And the claim gets extended to the position that some D3 teams are as good as D1 because several of the athletes on the D3 team could have gone D1. While I agree that some D3 athletes have the talent for D1, they do not have the drive and commitment regarding their sport to continue at the D1 level. Progressing to and competing at a higher level develops one skills to a level well beyond that of a D1 talent playing at the D3 level.

D3 athletics is great for one who is a 2 sport athlete without professional athlete aspirations as well as for one whose primary focus in life is not athletics.

My point is that there is a noticeable difference between the campus impact of a D1 athlete versus a D3 athlete with the D3 athlete having a greater impact on the social life of the small school (LAC).


I prefer to think of it less that they don’t have the commitment and more that the D1 schools that they got offered were not very academic. Our DD is going to NESCAC school as a recruited athlete and she had 3 D1 offers. Life is about more than sports so we declined the D1 offers, from what were very average schools, and she’s going D3. That’s just us though - if she’d been offered UVA, Duke or UNC, she wouldn’t have thought twice. There are a lot of D1 schools I’d never heard of with 90% acceptance rates eager to fill rosters. D1 is not all Notre Dame and Stanford.
Anonymous
Post 01/26/2023 20:30     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
It ain’t easy getting recruited at any NESCAC school, I would go as far as to say that the top recruits are mid/low D1 talent but focused on the academic outturn. NESCAC athletics is probably the strongest D3 conference across the majority of sports.
Anonymous
Post 01/26/2023 18:43     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The short answer is no, not in the least....academics dominate. I graduated from a Nescac and I have a DC at one currently and we were/are both on sports teams and whilst we took athletics seriously, everything was subordinate to academics. Socially the teams tend to be tight because of the amount of time spent with one another but every student has a diverse group of friends and the overall atmosphere is one of inclusivity.


Really interesting response, thank you. I totally believe that the athletes are scholars and that is most important to them, but I think the rest of your response may actually confirm my concern -- 40% of the student body has a group that they are tight with, and they are inclusive of others, but that could still mean that the non-athletes feel like they are tagging along with the nice athletes who are willing to include them in the group -- rather than having a group they feel 100% a part of and central to. Not because the athletes are doing anything wrong, but just because of the normal dynamics at play regarding who you spend the most time with and therefore get closest to.


I think a student who truly is on the outside of athletics and has no desire to participate would do fine at a top SLAC. If she follows her interests, there will be plenty of people with whom she could form friendships, including [b]athletics. The problem usually lies with the student who loves athletics and sports but wasn't quite good enough to get recruited. It could lead to resentment against athletes and the close relationships those groups form. You don't want to be envious of 40% of the student body.



including athletes.
Anonymous
Post 01/26/2023 18:42     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The short answer is no, not in the least....academics dominate. I graduated from a Nescac and I have a DC at one currently and we were/are both on sports teams and whilst we took athletics seriously, everything was subordinate to academics. Socially the teams tend to be tight because of the amount of time spent with one another but every student has a diverse group of friends and the overall atmosphere is one of inclusivity.


Really interesting response, thank you. I totally believe that the athletes are scholars and that is most important to them, but I think the rest of your response may actually confirm my concern -- 40% of the student body has a group that they are tight with, and they are inclusive of others, but that could still mean that the non-athletes feel like they are tagging along with the nice athletes who are willing to include them in the group -- rather than having a group they feel 100% a part of and central to. Not because the athletes are doing anything wrong, but just because of the normal dynamics at play regarding who you spend the most time with and therefore get closest to.


I think a student who truly is on the outside of athletics and has no desire to participate would do fine at a top SLAC. If she follows her interests, there will be plenty of people with whom she could form friendships, including athletics. The problem usually lies with the student who loves athletics and sports but wasn't quite good enough to get recruited. It could lead to resentment against athletes and the close relationships those groups form. You don't want to be envious of 40% of the student body.
Anonymous
Post 01/26/2023 18:38     Subject: does athletics dominate SLAC's like Amherst, Bowdoin, etc?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Amherst grad here. Academics by far dominates over athletics. Not even close. Hell, the a capella group at Amherst is more popular than the athletic teams.


Hmm, really? I actually know someone from Amherst who complained about this very issue that OP is raising.


I'm an Amherst grad (non-athlete) and yes, all the athletes are smart people. However, it is also true that a non-athlete is going to have to work harder to find their people. There was a report that was circulated to the Amherst community that acknowledged that sports plays too dominate a role in the social life - maybe it's available on the website? I'd make sure that there is some club or something that the kid is excited about that is offered by Amherst.