Music vs. Athletics

cellardweller
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:53:30 +0000

mia:

That’s what makes the difference between DIII and D I or DII schools. DIII schools can stick with student/athletes while Div I schools need to recruit a certain number of athlete/students. The effect of recruiting is nominal on the overall student body of a big div I school. Most D I schools have 10/12 varsity teams. MIT has 41!. At a typical Div I school 2 to 3% of the student body are varsity athletes. The average at Div III schools is 15%. MIT has 20% varsity athletes. (Wililams has nearly 40%!).

MIT therefore cannot conceivably expect to be competitive in football, baseball or basketball (and they are not). They have done very well in the “pirate” sports which involve either a weapon (pistol, fencing…) or water (swimming, crew, sailing…). Ironically, most of the varsity athletes in the sports where MIT does well are walk-ons. Even among those applicants that are recommended by a coach and admitted, a big percentage either never joins the team or drops out after a year or two. There is no expected commitment either way. The coaches can’t really get you recruited and you really don’t owe them anything if you do.

Unlike Harvard or Stanford for instance, MIT doesn’t need to dip far from the right edge of the academic bell curve among its applicants. There are simply no easy majors at MIT for low scoring athletes to hide. According to admissions varsity athletes at MIT actually have a higher than average GPA upon graduation.

As Mollie has stated athletics is just not that big a tip. It helps but no more than being a chess player, dancer, cheerleader, painter, violonist or juggler.