Football and computer science

OnTrack2013
Tue, 05 Apr 2016 21:59:10 +0000

D1 athletics and a challenging major will require some extra effort on your son’s part to find the right balance between the two.

My son is a D1 athlete and Engineering major. Working with his athletic academic adviser allows him to get early registration for his classes (most schools do this for athletes). He registers in the first wave, at the same time as seniors or honors students at his university. This allows him to fit his schedule around practice times as best as possible. This becomes more and more of a balance as you get into upper level classes which typically only have one section. So it will be important for your son to hold his ground on what he wants to major in and make sure the coach is supportive, some are not. He may need to miss practice one day a week for a particular semester.

By committing to take summer school EVERY year my son was able to have the Dean of the Science & Engineering College give him a waiver to take classes out of the normal sequence. Doing this allows him to take only 12 credits in his competition semester. He will also take 5 years to complete a 4 year program.

One Pac12 football player my son is still friends with from hs, gets signed up for both summer school sessions regardless of whether he wants to go to summer school or not. This allows the entire team to be on campus and train from June on. He only comes home for two weeks in May and is allowed to take no more than 9 credits in the fall. He meets NCAA progress to degree requirements by counting the 6 credits from summer school. As it is, this student has difficulty keeping up with a liberal arts major (and he was a solid student in hs). He switched his major to a “customized” one called General Studies because upper level science course are not offered in the summer and the travel schedule of the team means that he is typically off campus from Thurs. – late Sat/Sun. But this particular student willingly prioritized football over academics and has publicly said he will finish up a community college after his eligibility is done.