<p>Okay so i am currently a junior in high school and am a potential d1 recruit for volleyball in the class of 2015
I currently have a 3.93 gpa unweighted and a 4.27 weighted gpa
Although i do well in school and work hard on the court, i am one of the few who enjoy having a good time. I usually go out on weekends that i don’t have tournaments or DECA competitions. I am junior class president and you could say i have a lot of friends in my graduating class of about 400. Although i do not drink alcohol, i still go to parties where alcohol is present and am almost guaranteed to have a good time.
So various interests are coming in from the following schools: Loyola, Rice, Umiami, Tulane, Georgetown, All Ivy Leagues except for Brown, Miami of Ohio, Hawaii, Mizzou, and UVirginina.<br>
So basically i have a few questions:
Is plaiyng volleyball even worth it at such a high level? Will my Pre-med studies suffer?
Whether i decide to play or not, which school has the best balance of rigorous academics, and a social life that i would enjoy?</p>
<p>Word of warning, getting caught at a party with alcohol, drinking or not could adversely affect your plans. Watch what you post on twitter and Facebook, and what others post of you. Prospective schools often review this stuff once you friend them. At our school, there is random drop/alcohol screenings if you are an athlete. Any negative results are on your official record.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>College athletics in a Division 1 school are a full-time job. Most find it VERY difficult to be involved in the sport as well as a rigorous degree. Would you be open to smaller D-1 or D-2 schools where you could still compete, but where it is still ‘fun’?</p></li>
<li><p>Of the ones you list, Missouri is the one that sounds most like what I picture, but even it will be hard to work with a pre-med program. That said, I’m not sure an Ivy league program fits for a variety of reasons. Keep in mind that few Medical schools care very much where you do your undergraduate work as much as they look at GPA and MCAT scores.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>volleyball D1, pre-med, likes to party. For most students, one of these three will have to give. By most students, I mean all but one in ten thousand.</p>
<p>If you can leverage your athletic talent to get into Harvard or Yale, do that. One thing about the Ivy League is that they expect their athletes to be students first. Also, check out the majors of the rostered players to see if the high academic kids end up dropping the sport or switching majors to something less rigorous. </p>
<p>If you can find a way to contact someone who is on the team, and possibly someone who started on the team but dropped it, you are likely to get better information than the official line from the coaches.</p>
<p>If you can get into an Ivy, try that, because at many D1 schools you’re an athlete first and you need to fit your studies around your sport - the Ivies won’t do that. Do inquire about what happens if you get hurt (at most D1 schools, it means you lose your scholarship, whereas at Ivies they care about their graduation stats so the result may not be the same at all, thanks to “deep pockets”.) Fortunately volleyball is not one of these sports where coaches actually “disagree” (. soft term…) with any type of thorough major, but ask what the volleyball team’s highest, lowest, and average GPAs are, how many are STEM majors, what happens if a player gets hurt, if there are any full tuition scholarships and if so how many per year (odds are, only 1).
Finally, be aware that if you qualify for a volleyball scholarship it doesn’t typically mean full tuition, that receiving and athletic scholarship may bar you from getting need-based aid, and it may actually be better to apply to D3 schools if you have high financial need/are lower income since your financial aid there will be tied to need and merit, not purely athletics.</p>
<p>I’m trying to imagine telling my coach, even at an Ivy, that I need more time for studying because with all the practices and parties my GPA is taking a beating. I dunno, MYOS. The problem is still the social life if she wants to play volleyball and go to med school.</p>
<p>I know Ivy League schools limit practice length so students can remain competitive in their academics. I’m sure other top schools do something similar.</p>
<p>I talked to a Georgetown outside linebacker and he said “It’s just as competitive in the classroom as it is out on the field.” He was an accounting major.</p>
<p>There’s going to be students at these schools who don’t party or play a sport. When I visited Georgetown on a Saturday morning, all the sports teams were out while a lot of students were in the coffee shop doing homework. Who do you think is going to be best prepared for the test - the student who wants to play sports AND party, or the student who only focus on their class work? There’s only so many As in most classes.</p>
<p>jkeil: I agree, hopefully OP will only party during off season weekends because otherwise she won’t stay on the team and in school for a long time.
But it’ll be different wrt how seriously athletes’ academics are taken from Mizzou, MiamiOH, probably even Tulane.</p>
<p>some of you guys must be misunderstanding me .
i DO NOT and most likely NEVER will drink or do drugs due to personal preferences and recent tragedies
i am simply just looking for a fun school that is academically prestigious that does not have a hostile environment, and where i could feel welcome and occasionally have fun!</p>
<p>Volleyball, I read your post and realize you don’t drink, so I’ve not been making any mistakes about that. But I also read</p>
<p>i am one of the few who enjoy having a good time. I usually go out on weekends that i don’t have tournaments or DECA competitions. I am junior class president and you could say i have a lot of friends in my graduating class of about 400. Although i do not drink alcohol, i still go to parties where alcohol is present and am almost guaranteed to have a good time.</p>
<p>That to me says you like to spend time having a good time and having lots of friends. All that takes time, and time is what you might not have if you D1 and pre-med. For example, first year of college can be a ton of drama, and when you have lots of friends you can get sucked into a lot of drama. Time spent on friends is important to you, but there’s a finite number of hours in the day for friends, academics, and v-ball. </p>
<p>How bad will you miss v-ball if you don’t play at a highly competitive level. Could you start an outdoor beach volleyball tournament among your friends and get other dorms interested in a little competition? could you play intramural hoops or softball or flag football? Would doing several low-competition sports fill your craving for what college v-ball would bring you? Intercollegiate sports competition is for real. There’s always that new kid coming in each year who’s a little taller or a little quicker or who’s majoring in basket weaving and living in the gym. Just saying.</p>
<p>If the OP is really a D1 volleyball recruit and I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Stanford. Top-notch academics, a pretty darn good volleyball team, and good weather. A strong combination!</p>
<p>When my son was an undergrad, the semesters that he took Ochem I and II he only worked 2 hours a week (on Fridays from 4-6pm). During the other semesters he’d work maybe 8-10 hours a week. </p>
<p>I don’t think he would have ended up with the GPA that he did if he had been doing a D-1 sport. Between the practices, travel, games, etc…I think it would have been too hard being premed with a challenging major. </p>
<p>I don’t know if you’re male or female …or if D1 volleyball is a full-head scholarship sport. If it is and you’d be depending on that scholarship to pay for college, then you may find yourself in a pickle…needing to stay in the sport to pay for college, but the sport is killing your premed GPA.
(I know ivies don’t give athletic scholarships).</p>
<p>GPA must be protected at all costs as a premed. Med schools look at your Cum GPA and your BCMP GPA (bio, chem, math, physics). Both need to be very high. Once a GPA suffers, it’s really hard to bring it up.</p>
That’s why I asked the OP how good she really was at VB. Stanford and Hawaii will recruit similar players. Not really the ones considering the Ivies and Miami U.</p>