Hello there- my daughter is a 2027 HS graduate who is considering CMU as a student-athlete. There has already been material contact between the coaches and my daughter; and she is very interested in the school. Her interests right now are business (Tepper) and pre-law (Dietrich).
She understands that not a lot will happen until after her junior year - where admissions can get a better sense of her application. She attends a good college prep school, takes a lot of advanced classes, and has the kind of GPA where she has a decent chance to be considered for admission. My question to the board, for those who have kids who are student-athletes at CMU, is how are they managing things? Obviously her studies will take up a lot of time, and - in the UAA - there is a lot of travel (Atlanta, Chicago, etc).
Any thoughts about experiences here would be appreciated. Thanks!
Hopefully she will get some feedback here but fundamentally she has to talk with future teammates at any school she is considering. She can ask the coach to connect her with teammates. If a coach won’t do that, they aren’t serious (at least yet) about her as a recruit.
My daughter is a freshman engineer playing a spring sport but I do have some feedback. For the teams, they typically play against other schools in the region as opposed to cross crossing half the country. UAA conference championships and beyond would require the substantial travel. That said, the work is no joke. My kid studies all the time
My daughter also plays a spring sport. We did a visit and met with the coach last month, and she laid out the challenges of balancing schoolwork and the players’ athletic commitments. It sounds like a lot.
however, since my daughter won’t be on a STEM track, I am wondering if it will be less of a grind - no labs to schedule, etc…
Does anybody have an idea of whether a non-STEM CMU student has a little less of a grind?
Every field of study will have to be balanced with a sport.
I think for my daughter it was easier to be in a STEM major (engineering) at a STEM heavy school as the coach had to adjust to the lab requirements and the school helped by studying all math tests on thurs (and the coaches knew when those were in advance) and had to let the players go to classes that may only have one section. There were a few kids in non-STEM subjects (business, psychology and communications mainly) and they kind of had to make their own way as there were many classes that would meet their requirements. Probably not as many labs, but they may have had more big papers to write or observations for Psych.
It seemed all had their time issues but that the engineers, chemistry and bio majors, etc had similar schedules and the coach understood those.
I have one STEM kid and one artst, history, theater type kid. Each can’t understand what the other sees in her major and each struggles with the required classes in the other’s major (artsy one can barely add and subtract, and the other took forever to write papers or read a lot of novels).
So no, I don’t think it will be easier but it can be done.