Case Western Reserve (should I apply)?

Corbett
Sun, 01 Jul 2018 05:13:48 +0000

Do a lot of students attend sports games?

Case Western is a highly ranked research university with over 10,000 students and all kinds of resources. Yet when it comes to sports, they compete in NCAA Division III. This is the lowest possible level of NCAA competition – it is really meant for small liberal arts colleges that probably have fewer students than your high school.

If a major university opts for Division III athletics, you can assume that sports are not a big deal there. See also: MIT, URochester, Washington U in St. Louis, NYU, UChicago, Carnegie Mellon, and Emory. (I would add Johns Hopkins, but they are Division I for lacrosse).

CWRU football actually had a very successful year in 2017; they went undefeated during the regular season and made the NCAA Division III playoffs. Yet the best home attendance that they had was 2,238, for a game vs. Grove City College. There are probably many high school football games in Ohio that draw much larger crowds than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Case_Western_Reserve_Spartans_football_team

CWRU is a great university in many respects. But you don’t go there for the sports.