Friend of ours gave up their D1 offer later in the process for a D3 higher academic selection. Note that D1 schools might possibly do the same to you.
Jake Foster swam for Texas, US National Teamer, went straight into med school at UT Austin.
Paige Madden swam for Virginia, US Olympic Medalist, now at PA school at Stanford.
Derek Maas swam for Alabama, went straight to med school at NYU after graduation.
These athletes are likely the exception, and not the rule, but at their level of competition, these accomplishments are extraordinary.
I think with clear goals, strong mentorship, and exceptional time management skills, it can be done with a lot of sacrifice. But then again, med school and the life of service is all about sacrifice.
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Those accomplishments are truly impressive, and I am sure there are students that manage both. They are minority though.
Any sport - whether D1 or D3 - takes up a lot of time. It goes on the top of rigorous classes, MCAT prep and building resume for medical school. There are 24 hours in a day and even with clear goals, strong mentorship and exceptional time management skills, it may not be humanly possible for most individuals to juggle all that with sport commitments. D3 can may it a bit more manageable for some though.
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D3 is also better for multi-sport athletes who want to play in more than one sport during their college years.
I think it’s just hard to generalize about this based on division. It can vary so much by sport, school, and program. Recruits need to assess it for each program.
My kids were D1 and had teammates who managed this and other challenging academic and pre-professional tracks. But what I’m seeing more and more in my area is a gap year anyway, and I haven’t seen much difference in D1, D3 or non athletes taking that path.
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Yes, valid point.
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I saw recent statistics that 3/4 of medical students took at least one gap year. Curious to see if it is different for student athletes.
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I recently had an MD, whose kid is applying to med school (taking a gap year) tell me that they feel their kid basically has to learn the equivalent of their entire year 1 of med school BEFORE taking MCAT. Parent said it is SO SO different than when parent went. N of 1 but I found it very interesting as a non MD and explained a LOT to me why there are so many gap years now.
My daughter was at a D2 school, but high academics for engineering. One thing that made a difference for her was that she was eligible for an athletic scholarship so she didn’t have to work during the school year (she did her senior year for the experience, but the money was nice too). A D3 school couldn’t give her a scholarship, and a D1 school wouldn’t have offered her enough money (at most D1 schools she wouldn’t have been the top athlete on the team, if she even made the team)
Money was a factor for our family.
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This is more and more common as a large number of clinical hours become, if not required, expected. Several of my kids friends are taking 2 gap years.
I agree with @2026SwimMom that there are plenty of pre-med athletes out there. Also, D1 is too broad a term, honestly. P4 schools are different from Ivies, and also different from less competitive D1 programs. How far does the team travel? How often do they miss class days? What is the class day schedule? These are the questions I’d be looking at.
STEM classes are usually particularly impacted by these things because of lab hours, but it’s not the same everywhere. I have two Ivy athletes (different sports) and they very rarely miss a class day for competition. Practices are outside of class hours and rarely conflict.
We know kids at other schools who take lab classes in the summer or are limited by the coach on what/how many classes they may take in season.
The point is there is a huge variation is it’s program, not league, specific.
A side note on NorthEastern is, who does the coop requirement impact athletes and their overall experience? I don’t know the answer, but it is something I’d personally be digging into.
A pure Coop is not a graduation requirement FWIW… Some sort of experiential learning usually is - but often can be something less intense than a 6 month coop - it all depends on major or school or something. A “clinical placement” even counts Experiential Learning Graduation Requirement < Northeastern University Academic Catalog
Agree worth investigating by major of course.. but not as scary as it sounds I believe.
My kid was a bio major (went the physician assistant route) and played a D3 sport at a NESCAC. She actually did wind up missing classes and labs (which had to be made up) when she was in-season. Reason being, at the smaller schools you might only have 1 lecture or one lab section for a specific course unlike the larger D1 schools where you might be able to sit in during another lecture/lab section. At the beginning of the semester when she was in-season she would go to her professors with her game schedule so that they could work together to plan ahead when she could make the work/labs up. She also tried to stack most of her lab courses when she was not in-season but often higher level bio classes were only offered either fall or spring, not both semesters.
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