| Marian - you are correct in that of course you can receive a top education at Maryland if you choose the right crowd to hang with. But it is still a distraction. I was a recruited athlete - recruited by Maryland as well - and went to one of the top 10 USNWR report schools that give athletic scholarships (you can guess which one of the two) not because of its ranking, but rather because as a serious student it was much easier to be integrated into a challenging academic sphere - the distractions, and the probability of finding serious students with a major, major time and fatigue crunch like me - were higher. These zoo schools make for great stories, but one has to wonder how many serious students they turn away, because by and large they are good academic values. |