TNR: 'Don't Send Your Kids to the Ivy League'

Excellent point in that all Division III programs are not alike. In Wisconsin, Whitewater is a top-tier football and men's basketball program. Over the past 20 years, Platteville, Stevens Point and Whitewater have won multiple NCAA men's basketball titles - they even play in front of decent crowds. Those are also public schools with enrollments anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 -- they don't need to have extra kids paying 35k a year.

But go to other DIII Midwest schools, that are private with an enrollment of about 1,400 -- often in the middle of nowhere. Those schools absolutely need to "sell the dream" of riding the bench and extending a mediocre high school athletic career. They need those kids paying 25k a year. All for a team that, if they're lucky, will win their little conference before Whitewater beats them by 30 in the first round of the NCAA DIII playoffs.

If you ride the bench at an elite academic school in DIII, like Washington U in St. Louis or University of Chicago, I can absolutely see the merit -- top-flight education and the connections that can come with it. I cannot see the merit of spending $120,000 to live in Olivet, Michigan for four years to be the 16th man on a men's college basketball team.

Covering the lower, indifferent levels of DIII is borderline depressing. Watching a senior night for basketball where the only people in the crowd are the player's parents, 50 indifferent students and the students getting their physical therapy experience. It's like the college athletics version of a baseball fantasy camp in Florida.

 

Jeff Query played at Millikin. At least that's something.

 

Isn't Norwich a military school?

 

Assuming the kids study and do not partake in other activites. I personally really regret not playing small colelge basketball. I could have but thought that the college had to small a program in my academic interest. But I wound up getting a graduate degree in the same field anyway so it would not have made a lot of difference.

One thing that people should remember about private colleges is that very few people pay the sticker price. I have had two family members who were dead-set against going to the local big, Western state school. They were both able to find packages that were comparable to the cost of the public school. In the case of one nephew Seton Hall came in with a big aid package that made the cost competitive with the public school.

 

Knowing quite a bit about the law school admissions game, at least, I would say that the 1,000 times better investment would be not playing a sport, and using the time and money saved to not get a marginal LSAT score and get perfect rather than good grades.

 

Or maybe just not spending the money to enter an oversaturated profession.

 

Well, yeah, that's definitely part of it, too. But at least a sky-high LSAT and GPA - not sure if medical schools look at it the same way - can give you an edge in actually getting one of the jobs still available in the profession.

Bottom line: The admissions director at Yale/Harvard/Stanford/etc. have a pair of applications. One has a 3.8 GPA with a 99th percentile LSAT. The other has a 3.7 with a 98th percentile LSAT. Oh, and he started at linebacker at Hanover College for three years.

They take the first guy. Every single time.

 

That gets great athletes. Covered a school in New Hampshire that regularly sent elite student-athletes.

 

Ivy grads are hardly set for life -- at least if they pursue a journalism career.

My degree opened zero doors for me in terms of getting a journalism job. Not in print, and not in TV.

Zero.

 

But whom would you rather hire?

Being an ex-college athlete at any school gives you an edge. Being an ex-athlete at the big state school gets you elected to the Senate, as in one my current Senators played big-time college football.

 

I think that being an ex-athlete at a BCS school or Division I school gives you an edge - an old friend of mine from law school was a walk-on at a huge name BCS school, and he said that's all anyone wanted to talk about at his interviews. And what's funny is that he started off his undergrad career at an Ivy League school, where he likely would have started and eventually starred.

 

Back to Augustana for a moment, one thing I thought was interesting there is how much they sold the idea of sports as a way to build a well-rounded college resume. The school recently redid its stadium, and one piece of it is a lounge area called the Ken Anderson Academic All-American Center. (I'm not sure Anderson ponied up the dough, but he provided the connection with the foundation -- affiliated with one of the Bengals' co-founders -- that did). In the lounge, posted very prominently is the fact that Augustana is in the top 10 all-time in Academic All-Americans, among all divisions. There are posters up of recent players who were all-conference AND got postgraduate grants in part because of their status as athletes.

While my son won't be joining them, I thought Augustana was very effective at selling the idea that you can still play college sports, yet have it open doors for the academic career you want. Even Augustana can't fool people that another Ken Anderson is coming through that door, but it can sell you that even though you've never heard of the school, it can give you the opportunities and connections you're looking for. For small D3 schools with little name recognition, that's critical.

As for sticker price, a girl at my church -- who is decent academically but not an all-A's person -- is going to Elmhurst College (not as an athlete), and thanks to grants and scholarships is paying a whopping $5,000 out of the $43,000-a-year base sticker price. There are a lot of schools ready to make you a good deal, asking you what is going to take to get you into this college.