Uhh yeah that's just not true. I know a lot of doctors and many of them played sports in college. So you must not have anything to do with med school, which is of course quite rigorous. There perhaps are some obscure professors who are "anti-sport" in certain fields or universities, but that is probably more of an exception than rule.
By my families anecdotal evidence, everything ThePonchat stated was absolutely true. My wife has her PhD in Genetics, and I remember distinctly oh so many years ago her advisor telling her that her being a collegiate athlete was one of the reasons they accepted her as a graduate student, it certainly was not her grades which indeed suffered due to her swimming career at a Big Four conference school. My oldest son will be finishing his PhD in the pharmaceutical sciences this summer, and he too was told his collegiate career as a soccer player also played a part in his acceptance into the program. My youngest son, has his Masters in Data Science from a top engineering school, when he was applying his soon to be advisor encouraged him to play his Covid year of eligibility with the new school during first semester as a graduate student. This one got an engineering degree at top undergraduate engineering school and practically got all A's while playing D1 soccer. As ThePonchat said, employers love athletes. My wife and I met as D1 swimmers, we don't talk about our swimming careers much, but for our friends, colleagues and clients who know of our past always seem to work the phase "you know they were D1 athletes in swimming" whenever we are social settings, heck even my wife, who just left a 20+yr career at a major university for another job at another major university here in the Triangle area of NC, got comments from many of her new colleagues at the new job about being collegiate athlete, why? because it is still on her CV because she is proud of this fact. Just my two cents, sorry for the long winded post.
My original post was not about grades. It was about the viability of playing 2 sports in college which I had no opinion about, I was curious how possible it is. But the thread took a tangent into grades, which is something I had an opinion about but it should have been asked on a separate thread. But while we're on the topic, to be clear, I believe in getting good grades and learning! But, from my experience, even more important than that is following your interests as there are many niches in this world and many people with subpar grades go on to do quite well. And if you're playing a sport it is worth it if it means you have a bit less time to devote to studying. I've thought a bit about grades in the context that my son's mom wants him to go to Harvard. And I'm like, yeah that's def not going to happen on academics alone. There are kids getting straight As and above 4.0's who aren't even getting into schools like UCLA, Cal, etc BUT... my kid, if he keeps on a path of competitive sports, he could get recruited and so he would have a better chance of going to a top school by playing sport at a high level. Ie, being top at a sport + subpar grades > no sport and perfect grades
I'm a full professor in an engineering department and head of the graduate committee. I saw it happen to multiple candidates this year alone. In fairness, we are in an area with a lot of outdoor activities and there seems to be the perception that people want to come here "just" for those activities, not for the work, which is what is the strike against them.
define "outdoor activities"... we're not talking hippies who rock climb and smoke weed... that's a lot different than a devoted athlete who trains hard and is disciplined with diet and his time. also- what kind of engineering? sounds like there's probably a old school mentality in some fields like chemical or civil or probably most of them. but that old school gate keeping mentality is on its way out. i look at a lot of profiles... like Pat Gelsinger who is the CEO of Intel and started with an associate's degree. Or Larry Ellison founder of Oracle who dropped out of Univ of Illinois. In tech there is a lot more openness and variability in the paths. In most fields competence will eventually find its path, even though it may not be a pretty straight line through through grad schools like yours. But in some fields you do have to fall in line like if you want to work for a high level law firm in DC or something.
I worked for a couple of years in a college of engineering and what you said earlier about admitting grad students based in large part on a single-minded focus on their discipline (particularly computer science and computer engineering) was the rule. I had nothing to do with admissions, but it was pretty clear that was the case. It is pretty funny where this thread has wandered.
Engineering is also notorious for being anti-athlete friendly. So, there’s that too. As Paul Harvey always said, “now you know…the rest of the story.”
I know brilliant engineers who enjoy "outdoor activities". this thread is full of a bunch of misinformation. you're telling me that a kid who applies to grad school with a 3.8 GPA undergrad from MIT and plays soccer will be rejected because he plays soccer? uh yeah no
I can only speak to the university where I worked, but there were no varsity athletes among the 500-plus undergrads in CS or ECE in the years I was there. The grad students I was around hadn't been athletes as undergrads (most of the highest performers were undergrads from other countries, where college sports aren't much of a thing). Most of those I had contact with were PhD students who were dialed in on their work/research/career prospects to a degree that didn't leave much room for anything but sporadic "activities" outside that work, outdoors or otherwise. You should also re-read what I wrote. I did not claim that a prospective student, such as your fictional MIT undergrad, would be penalized for having played a sport. But having played a sport wouldn't have been a factor in admissions. With that, I'll stop beating this poor horse.
I went to NC State, a top engineering school, half the men's and women's swim teams were engineering majors. Civil, Electrical, Industrial, Mechanical, Chemical, none of them are Nuclear. A lot of stereotyping
Well initially I thought we were talking about athletes who are actually playing for their school, but then @Alemannia said students who do "outdoor activities" which is quite an ambiguous term. Yeah, I mean, let's differentiate between causation and correlation. There is a correlation between certain majors and athletes do to a whole multitude of reasons, but that does not mean that the sport per se is the direct cause of getting rejected as a grad applicant. Except by some people like @Alemannia, who bizarrely are on a soccer forum yet seem to thumb his nose at soccer student athletes, so maybe he sees a activity that requires expenditure of calories and automatically puts the reject stamp on it. What about e-sports or other hobbies? is gardening ok @Alemannia ?
How about competitive chess? Is that ok? I'd like to know a list of "activities" that will get you rejected from engineering school. Please advise so I can prepare my son
Oh, very familiar. Coached and recruited plenty of hopeful engineers. Several majors are not friendly for athletes. Doesn't mean it cannot be done, but it's just not too friendly. Nursing, education, athletic training, engineering, are just a few off the top of my head that have ran into a lot of conflicts in athletics and academics.
I was a college soccer player myself, so this idea that I’m anti-athlete is bizarre. I gave you a data point, you can do with that what you want. I thought you might find a view from the other side useful, but you seem to have made up your mind. Not every faculty member views things as I described it (for example I don’t). However, of the many different universities with which I have been affiliated (large/small, public/private, DI/DII/DIII) I would guess that it is seen as a negative more often than a positive in engineering graduate admissions, with which I am most familiar. I didn’t think that this needed to be stated so bluntly, but academics are a funny bunch. They think that they are the world expert in some narrow field and shun anyone who does things so slightly differently that only 10 people in the world understand the distinction. It’s a strange place, man. I would classify cross country skiing, cross country (running), triathalon (?), and downhill skiing, as “outdoor activities “ for most folks, but they also happen to be college sports too.
Do they say why they see athletes as a negative? I would assume by grad school, most athletes are done with their scheduled team training (personal training could be done as schedule permit), so I wouldn't think it's "can't make classes" or something.
I know lots of disciplined, successful people who smoke weed. Rock climbing is not an easy sport. I've known plenty of college athletes who weren't exactly paragons of personal discipline, integrity, or work ethic.
My wife teaches nursing, and I'm sure she would say it's completely incompatible with being a college athlete.
But I am talking about professional engineers, not hopeful, all finished their engineering degrees and stayed competitive. Yes, they busted their asses, but all are quite successful today.
Horse ain't dead yet, my college roommate of 3 years was a ECE/CS dual major and a varsity athlete for four years. My youngest son was ME/CS dual major and a varsity athlete for four years. This whole thread very narrow minded
I know, but I was just trying to imagine what kind of "outdoor activities" as the guy put it would conjure up negative feelings by an engineering professor. I was envisioning people that flock to the west, like ski bum, surfer, rock climber... people that might want to have that lifestyle first and maybe get a degree on the side, which I can see academics maybe rolling their eyes at. But I have massive respect for rock climbers. Its a pretty big sport globally with some amazing athletes.
So initially you said that being an athlete was more likely to hurt you than help you in engineering (which you know since you're an engineering professor who approves applicants). Now come to find out you yourself were a college soccer player. Please make it make sense. So you're living proof that a college soccer player can go on to get a graduate degree in science/engineering, yet you're here disparaging it. Just a tad bit ironic, no?
Doctors are not nurses—they do pre-med. Nurses do clinicals and lab during undergrad. My wife teaches at a community college—the students have long days on-site doing clinicals which cannot be missed nor rescheduled.
Its been known since the beginning of time that certain majors are hard to pull off if you are an athlete. And most athletes go for the "easy" majors. But there is def a path. If you want to be an engineer for ex, then maybe you don't major in engineering, but you major in math for undergrad and after sports are done in your life you go to engineering grad school. Technically you can major in anything in undergrad and still get a Ph D in anything. You would just have to go back to school to take the pre-requisites for said graduate program. A lot of people get a major in say business or some liberal arts like history or sociology, and later decide they want to do med/law/engineering, so they take the prereqs (some of which can be done at a local community college). Yes it's harder to go from business/lib arts undergrad to STEM grad, than vice versa; eg it's easier to do an engineering undergrad and then get an MBA. And we've all seen that old student (in their 40s or 50s) with gray hair going back for a career change in some hard majors. Some schools will have less flexibility, but some will be more open minded about non-traditional undergrad paths.