Advice needed for 2022 recruit

[murphdog]

So are you saying soccer players, runners, rowers, basketball and football players are smarter? have less demanding schedules? Why would a basketball player be able to study a STEM major but not a softball player?
And what is that reality? And if the reality is she cant continue with STEM major then shouldn't that have been hashed out prior to signing? Who is fooling who here?

My DD’s roommate for the past 4 years is a basketball player. N’s schedule in the off season is minimal.
C’s softball off season schedule is multiple days a week and then study halls. So at this school there is a huge difference between the two as far as demand.
That being said it’s possible at some schools to have a more demanding major as long as the coach is aware of it before hand.

 

[Rolling Hard]

As a group at this university, I suppose that's possible. I'm just relating what I've observed at DD's school...first hand. I don't know about any other athlete's schedule, but I know what the softball players do. I also know what the more successful student-athletes major in; the athletic department publishes an honor roll. The softball team is almost fully represented, but there aren't any STEM majors there.

I've also seen softball players change majors...always to something less difficult. The reality for many is that, athletes or not, the difficulty of a major isn't evident until it's been tried for a bit. As for "who is fooling who"...I don't know what that means here.

The coach that recruits a player should and probably does know that the player desire to major in a stem program. If playing softball and being in a stem program is as rare as unicorns why does the coach recruit such a player?
Also why would the schedule for a softball player be that more demanding then a soccer or basketball player?

 

[Trojans29]

I'm the original poster, so I can address a few of these things now that we have gone through the process. For my daughter, playing in college is about 2 things. First, she loves the game and can't imagine being done with it. Second, she puts so much pressure on herself to maintain the perfect GPA etc., that she needs an outlet where she can take a mental break from the academics and be able to totally focus on something else for a while. It helps her feel balanced.

As far as the comparison of D2 and D3 (and maybe this is only representative of the 2 schools she was considering), the D3 put much more emphasis on the academic side during the visit. We spent almost as much time with the head of the forensic program as we did with the the coaches. The D2 gave a pretty standard tour, but it was much more geared toward why she should be there for softball. Getting to practice with the team was cool for her, but in the end the academics won out, as they should.

One interesting note about the D3 were the coaches saying if you get an offer from another school (academic+athletic) and it made it less than the D3, let them know what that package is, and they have the ability to go to the admissions people to see what they can to to at least match it. I don't think they were guaranteeing that, but at least saying something being done was a possibility. It turned out in the end the academic money alone beat the academic+athletic of the D2.