The Most Well-Rounded Undergraduate Experiences

hawkette
Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:25:40 +0000

bay,
Nice analysis although I wouldn’t necessarily agree with much of it. A few comments:


I don’t know how familiar you are with club sports and intramural sports at the universities to which I gave Athletic Life 5s, but these often are very active programs and large numbers of students participate. Furthermore, the number of sports and leagues is often mind-blowing and dwarfs the number of varsity athletic opportunities available at any college. I think you may be underrating what goes on athletically on these campuses.
As for your comparison of the entertainment value the athletic life of a place like UC Berkeley and the Ivies,




Cal has the Pac-10, great football and the Stanford-Cal rivalry.

Yale has the Ivy-League, the Harvard-Yale football game and rivalry and hockey games.



I’m sorry, but I laughed out loud when I read it. There is no comparison. Outside of the Harvard-Yale match, Ivy League football games have a hard time attracting more than 10k. Beyond friends and family, almost nobody cares and there is zero national consequences to these games. By contrast, weaker major conference programs like Stanford, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt attract 3-4x that and even Duke attracts 2-3x. And, of course, ND attracts 8x the Ivy League and could sell many more tickets if the stadium allowed. And all regularly play games that have ramifications on the national scene (even if they don’t win many of those games ).

Similar comparisons can be made for basketball (men and women) and baseball. Outside the Northeast and upper Midwest, few colleges play hockey.


Re social life, have you spent time at UC Berkeley or on the campuses at many of the schools that I ranked as 5s? There is a ton going on—far more than at a place like Yale. Often, what would be considered a “big weekend” at an Ivy wouldn’t even be as socially active as an “off weekend” at one of the 5s. You might not care about a lot of the stuff going on at these colleges and I’m not claiming that Yale isn’t lacking for things for its students, but my sense is an impartial observer would reach the same conclusions that I did.


ldb,
If U Michigan is a powerhouse (2008/2009 record of 8-16, 3-13 in the Big Ten), what does that make Duke (2008/2009 record of 9-15, 4-8 in the ACC)? A powerhouse, too?? :)

If Duke played U Michigan in football in the last two years or this years, which would be favored and which would win?