<p>Many of the great athletes have graced Stanford over the years…John McEnroe, John Elway, Jim Plunkett, Tom Watson, Eric Heiden, Kerri Walsh, Mike Mussina, Tiger Woods, Andrew Luck, etc…just to name a few…</p>
<p>…Michelle Wie is one of the latest to have graduated along with Andrew Luck in 2012…and what is most telling and compelling about many of these athletes…is that…they did not have to have challenged themselves academically by attending Stanford and compete with many of the best academic minds of their generation…</p>
<p>…instead, they could have easily chosen the path of least resistance like most “top elite athletes” and attend other “universities” mainly known for their particular sport’s reputation…but, they didn’t. Bravo(a) to them!</p>
<p>Here is a great article about Michelle Wie’s US Women’s Open win yesterday as well as an article about education at Stanford that all future scholar-athletes should read who fancy themselves attending school on The Farm in the years to come…</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-tours-news/2012-03/gwar-michelle-wie-education”>http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-tours-news/2012-03/gwar-michelle-wie-education</a></p>
<p><a href=“Michelle Wie wins U.S. Women's Open”>http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2014/06/22/michelle-wie-wins-us-womens-open-pinehurst/11241503/</a></p>
<p>Thanks for the links. Interesting articles. To be completely candid, however, you might want to mention that Michelle’s major, communications, is not the most challenging of majors at LSJU. In fact, at one time it was almost universally seen as the easiest major. Perhaps that has changed. I believe that Richard Sherman was also a communications major. Both of them probably also took plenty of very rigorous courses.</p>
<p>@fredthered. You are welcome. But, it is rather odd and peculiar to see that you would pick out the “two” individuals out of hundreds who graduate each year as student-athletes who graduate with degrees/majors that MIRROR the difficult majors that NON student-athletes graduate with…they graduate with everything from human biology to CS to mechanical engineering to international relations…and, to be frank, most STEM majors at Stanford “assume” the non-STEM majors as “fuzzy easy majors” (which is wrong) whether it is English, international relations, French Literature, classics, or communications…and even economics is clumped into this group…</p>
<p>…this is not Alabama or LSU you are talking about…</p>
<p>You were the one who brought up Michelle and how she challenged herself academically. I think that many students at Stanford do, in fact, challenge themselves academically. But not all do. Let’s be honest about that. At the same time, I am sure there are some “student athletes” (the NCAA wants us to use that term for legal reasons) at Alabama or LSU who do challenge themselves. But overall, I agree with you that life is somewhat different for most student athlete at Stanford compared with most other schools.</p>
<p>Couple of things. You say that Stanford graduates “hundreds” of student athletes each year. The graduating class I think is about 1650 in any given year. Do you have a more precise estimate on how many are student athletes?</p>
<p>On the majors, I’m glad to hear that most student-athletes are taking challenging majors. I checked out the men’s and women’s bball teams. According to the official Stanford website, here are the majors (excluding undeclared):</p>
<p>4 science, tech, and society (also a lot of football players here. a relatively new major at LSJU)
3 hum bio
2 psych
1 afro studies
1 psych
1 econ
1 communications
1 hum bio & sociology
1 international relations
1 civ & envir eng</p>
<p>@fredthered…each year over 200 plus student-athletes graduate from Stanford…You maybe forgetting that the majority of the Stanford student-athletes participate in the Olympic sports like track and field, swimming, water polo, volleyball, soccer, rowing, etc…all you have to do is go to <a href=“http://www.gostanford.com”>http://www.gostanford.com</a> and look under the roster for each sport under personal bio to see what they are majoring in…</p>
<p>…in terms of Michelle Wie…she was a professional golfer…competing in the LPGA during her years at Stanford. I don’t know of many or any who was able to pursue a degree (I don’t care what major) from Stanford competing in the LPGA or any professional sport for that matter…do you?</p>
<p>gravitas. Last time I checked, basketball was an Olympic sport. I know anyone can check on majors. That’s what I did.</p>
<p>I don’t know Michelle Wie at all. But you write, “I don’t know of many or any who was able to pursue a degree (I don’t care what major) from Stanford competing in the LPGA or any professional sport for that matter…do you?”</p>
<p>Are you saying that there is a fundamental incompatibility with being a full-time student at Stanford and a full-time professional athlete, and that as a result Michelle should not have been admitted to Stanford?</p>
<p>Fred. I believe we are getting off tangent here…
No, on the contrary…if I’m not mistaken she was one of the top students in her high school graduating class…and she had “always” wanted to get a Stanford education according to past interviews…</p>
<p>…she did not have to go to “college” to make it like so many other elite (prodigy) athletes…she turned pro at age 16 and had signed multimillion dollar contracts…but she did attend Stanford…and many of the expert sports analysts NOW acknowledge that it may have been the best thing to help her “mature” into the type of person/athlete she has become…</p>
<p>And by the way…most student-athletes (contrary to popular belief) don’t become professional athletes…rather, they go on to get lucrative jobs in engineering, CS, technology, investment banking, consulting, pursue professional degrees (medical, law, business), advanced MS and PhD programs to become professors and scientists, etc… </p>
<p>…for Stanford student-athlete grads…at least they have something to fall back on (a powerful Stanford degree) if their “professional sports” aspirations don’t pan out…most other well known sports programs around the country unfortunately fall FAR SHORT…</p>