<p>This is the kind of article that I would expect hawkette to be all over.</p>
<p>[ESPN</a> - These schools put the student back in student-athlete - Columnist](<a href=“These schools put the student back in student-athlete - ESPN”>These schools put the student back in student-athlete - ESPN)</p>
<p>There have been a rash of articles like that recently (certain schools, tho, have pretty much given up on academic standards when it comes to recruits).</p>
<p>gellino,
You’re right. The topic of which schools offer the best combination of great academics and great sports (and a great social life) is one of my favorites and several of my work colleagues have pointed out to me or emailed similar articles to me over the last few weeks. </p>
<p>The campuses buzz, the enthusiasm is high, the drinks are flowing, the smiles are wide and the good times are everywhere for students who want to participate. </p>
<p>Whether these colleges-Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame, Rice, (RICE!?!) Wake Forest-continue to win isn’t really the point. The point is that these colleges put on a great show for their students and their alumni and the games at many of these colleges are an absolute EVENT (and many show up regularly on national TV). </p>
<p>For many college students, an active college athletic scene leads to fun experiences and it looks like at least one of the Ivies wants in on the fun and the enthusiasm of these events. Recently, Harvard played its home opener on a Friday night (first Friday night game in their history) and they attracted more than 20,000 fans. I’m sure that the folks who made it out for that game had a good time and no doubt that the energy of the large crowd did much to feed that experience. </p>
<p>Congrats to Northwestern, Vandy, Duke et al for your performance so far and for showing that great academics and great college sports can co-exist and results in a pretty fun combination. Enjoy the pre-game parties and tailgates and the post-game bashes at the various party sites on your campuses. And good luck in your games for the rest of the season…and maybe even the Bowl season. :)</p>
<p>Haha LSU #10 in the APR rankings. That cracks me up. The only thing academic in regards to football players here is learning how to count by 7’s. That’s the perception at least, maybe they do a great job undercover.</p>
<p>The point that seems to be missing here is that great athletics can raise the profile of academics of previously lesser schools.</p>
<p>I know for example here at LSU the average ACT has risen a couple of points since they started winning big time in football. I probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for athletics. It’s given people more faith in the university and in turn programs like research initiatives now have the resources to operate effectively.</p>
<p>"Congrats to Northwestern, Vandy, Duke et al "</p>
<p>et al must be code for Florida???</p>
<p>There are real differences among “top” academic colleges in the campus energy that gets created by the school’s athletic life. At many colleges, athletic life has a material impact on the nature of the undergraduate experience and IMO, along with the overall school social life, should definitely be part of any college search process. </p>
<p>Many have been seduced and won over by the many appealing features/spinoffs of athletic life that can be enjoyed as a student….or as an alum 50 years after graduation. Pep rallies, marching bands, energetic mascots, great tailgates and parties, national TV coverage, Bowl games, and even the games themselves. So, if you’re making college visits this fall, try to take in a football game and get a better understanding of and feel for the campus environment. </p>
<p>As far as fan support, I have been keeping track of the attendance for the colleges in the USNWR Top 30. Here is how they compared last week:</p>
<pre><code>9/27 , BOWL DIVISION
</code></pre>
<p>With 61,968 in attendance STANFORD defeated @ U Washington by 35-28
With 25,527 in attendance DUKE defeated U Virginia by 31-3
With 70,585 in attendance NORTHWESTERN defeated @ Iowa by 22-17
With 16,885 in attendance RICE defeated North Texas by 77-20
VANDERBILT , No game<br>
With 80,795 in attendance NOTRE DAME defeated Purdue by 38-21
With 63,970 in attendance UC BERKELEY defeated Colorado State by 42-7
With 25,527 in attendance U VIRGINIA lost to @ Duke by 3-31
With 73,963 in attendance UCLA lost to Fresno State by 31-36
With 106,724 in attendance U MICHIGAN defeated U Wisconsin by 27-25
With 42,839 in attendance USC lost to @ Oregon State by 21-27
With 33,173 in attendance WAKE FOREST lost to Navy by 17-24
With 35,830 in attendance U NORTH CAROLINA defeated @ Miami by 28-24</p>
<pre><code>9/27 , CHAMPIONSHIP SUB-DIVISION & DIVISION III
</code></pre>
<p>With 5,618 in attendance HARVARD lost to @ Brown by 22-24
With 8,836 in attendance PRINCETON defeated Lehigh by 10-7
With 13,142 in attendance YALE lost to @ Cornell by 14-17
With 680 in attendance MIT defeated Nichols College by 43-42
With 7,561 in attendance U PENN lost to @ Lafayette by 17-24
With 5,030 in attendance COLUMBIA lost to @ Towson by 24-31
With 1,755 in attendance U CHICAGO lost to @ Elmhurst by 6-27
With 4,427 in attendance DARTMOUTH lost to U New Hampshire by 6-42
WASH U , No game<br>
With 13,142 in attendance CORNELL defeated Yale by 17-14
With 2,118 in attendance JOHNS HOPKINS lost to @ Moravian by 10-33
With 5,618 in attendance BROWN defeated Harvard by 24-22
With 1,941 in attendance CARNEGIE MELLON defeated Hiram by 41-6
With 2,233 in attendance GEORGETOWN lost to Holy Cross by 14-38
With 1,500 in attendance TUFTS defeated Bates by 34-7</p>
<pre><code> NO TEAM
CALTECH
EMORY
</code></pre>
<p>Caltech football, undefeated for over 30 years. :)</p>
<p>Also, I can’t see CMU drawing a crowd of almost 2000 unless it was their homecoming game. The marching band generally makes up about half of the crowd.</p>
<p>hawkette,</p>
<p>Other than Stanford, Northwestern, Rice, Notre Dame, and Duke (and probably Vandy/Wake Forest), all the other top-30 schools you just mentioned recruit like any school outside of top-50. The academic profile of USC/Berkeley’s football/basketball athletes is no better than that for, say, Oregon State athletes.</p>
<p>So tell me Sam. You really believe the average incoming recruit from Duke in BB is as good as the average incoming freshman? Let’s not just leave it to football where none of the forementioned schools by you, with the exception of ND, has a strong history of winning.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I had seen a post on here a little while back showing that the only five schools whose football team’s avg SAT was over 950 were Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt. After that, there was no distinction say between Penn State, UMaryland, Rutgers and Notre Dame, Wake Forest, UMichigan.</p>
<p>The BCS computers love Vandy right now, because Vandy beat Ole Miss and Ole Miss in turn shocked Florida. By the distributive property (right term?), the computers now think that Vandy > Florida, Q.E.D. It’s fun while it lasts, but this too shall pass.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s called the transitive property; not the distributive property.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hawk - how do you feel about “academic” schools which take extra leeway w/ their recruits and admit athletes (primarily for FB/BB) who are close to the NCAA minimums?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think you missed the point. Even student-athletes at the Ivies have lower test scores than their average peers. But they still have higher test scores than athletes from other schools. On the other hand, athletes in schools like Michigan and Berkeley aren’t that different than athletes from, say, Oregon State. So Michigan/Berkeley give a lot more leeway than schools like Rice/Stanford.</p>
<p>You raised a good point about BB players at Duke. I should have been more meticulous when I mentioned Duke. When it comes to basketball athletes, there’s no distinction between Duke and other 3rd-tier schools. BB is their only exception.</p>
<p>There is definitely a difference across schools with regard to athletes. For example at some places in order to recruit a coach has to run the athlete by admissions first to see if he/she makes whatever the basic cut is. There is a basic hirearchy also within schools by sport. So that some sports have a higher threshold than others, you can figure this one out (ivies or no ivies included). In part, this helps insure they are meeting the NCAA averages for sports. So some sports carry other in this sense. Also, an important issue relating to this, which may be driving some of the more “surprising” schools on the list, is the school’s support for the students getting through the place. Supposedly, for years Paterno at PSU has had a very high graduation rate for his players relative to many others. So there is how smart versus what kind of help do they get to keep them from failing. Ivies seem to be less sensitive to extra help relative to the big Div 1 revenue sport schools in this regard. But clearly, there are differences by schools, and one needs to consider the issue when making a choice.</p>
<p>Of course Sam you do realize that BB is really the only “major” sport Duke excells at correct?</p>
<p>Yes. I am not sure why you asked. You know this very well already: you can’t have a <em>consistently</em> competitive program in BB/FB without the same access to the talent pool. In order to do that, you can’t set your admission standard higher than most other schools. It’s no coincidence that Duke has given coach K pretty much no restriction for recruiting. Northwestern may be competitive this year but once Sutton graduate after this season, it’s gonna take a while for them to get lucky again and find someone of that caliber while still having decent admission standard. Also, football/basketball isn’t <em>always</em> about how talented the players you have, so sometime teams can be competitive even without all those 4/5-star recruits. But still, you can’t be competitive on a regular basis year in and year out without the 4/5-star recruits. Unfortunately in the FB/BB, there are just not that many 4/5-star recruits who also have good academic credentials. In sports like lax, swimming, and tennis, however, there are enough talented athletes that also do well inside their classroom. This allows teams like Duke (lax) and Stanford (tennis/swimming) to be consistently competitive while still having decent admission standard (not as high as their regular students but still higher than that for most other schools’ athletes as it should be since their regular admission is also tougher than that for just about any school).</p>
<p>rjko,
Well, before you go taking shots at the “major” sports in which Duke “excels,” you might want to take a look at some unbiased comparisons which don’t reflect too well on your alma mater compared with the current scene at Duke. </p>
<p>In football, Duke actually ranks ahead of U Michigan according to the latest Sagarin computer rankings that are published by USA Today. Duke is currently ranked # 38. U Michigan is ranked # 45. </p>
<p>Also, according to the final 2008 Sagarin rankings for men’s basketball, Duke was ranked 7th. U Michigan ranked 148th. I suspect that the same would be the case if Sagarin did rankings for women’s basketball. </p>
<p>Were there other “major” sports to which you were referring?</p>
<p>Hawkette, Duke may be ranked higher than Michigan in football today. But 99% of the times, Michigan is ranked much higher than Duke in Football.</p>