2017 Season - National Perspective

[Gregory Sager]

NYU's enrollment, granted the multitude of programs they offer, is much larger than the average D3 school (26,000 undergrad students was the most recent number I found). How is it that a university of NYU's caliber with such a large enrollment, foreign student attractiveness, and in one of the most desirable cities in the world not have a better soccer team?

I'm always baffled when people quote enrollment figures as though they should be some sort of metric of a school's athletic success, or lack thereof. Unless a school has a coach who isn't doing his or her job, no coach in D3 creates a team from the student body at large. He or she recruits student-athletes who arrive on campus with the specific intention to play for that coach's team. In other words, enrollment size is irrelevant, because the players listed on the roster were specifically brought to that school to play that particular sport.

Take a look at this year's Final Four, and how each side got to Greensboro, in terms of enrollment:

Messiah (2800 undergrads) > Rochester (5100 undergrads)
North Park (1900 undergrads) > St. Thomas (5800 undergrads)
Chicago (5600 undergrads) > Emory (6600 undergrads)
Brandeis (3700 undergrads) > Tufts (5000 undergrads)

Enrollment size matters in high school in terms of sports. It doesn't matter in college.

[Gregory Sager]

The soccer boards on d3boards.com simply don't have that much traffic. That's why there's so many gaps in terms of fan coverage.

As of this moment, here's the number of posts in each of the five men's sports that have dedicated posting sections:

732,074 for football
394,285 for basketball
  68,576 for baseball
  34,706 for soccer
    1,708 for hockey

How long has each board been active?

Football since 1998*
Basketball since 1998*
Baseball since the first half of the '00s* (Pat Coleman would probably know the exact year)
Soccer since 2010
Hockey since 2011

*The d3boards.com format changed in 2005, so the archives only go back that far. In other words, football, basketball, and baseball only have a five-year head start on soccer as far as posting totals are concerned.

[PaulNewman]

NYU's enrollment, granted the multitude of programs they offer, is much larger than the average D3 school (26,000 undergrad students was the most recent number I found). How is it that a university of NYU's caliber with such a large enrollment, foreign student attractiveness, and in one of the most desirable cities in the world not have a better soccer team?

I'm always baffled when people quote enrollment figures as though they should be some sort of metric of a school's athletic success, or lack thereof. Unless a school has a coach who isn't doing his or her job, no coach in D3 creates a team from the student body at large. He or she recruits student-athletes who arrive on campus with the specific intention to play for that coach's team. In other words, enrollment size is irrelevant, because the players listed on the roster were specifically brought to that school to play that particular sport.

Take a look at this year's Final Four, and how each side got to Greensboro, in terms of enrollment:

Messiah (2800 undergrads) > Rochester (5100 undergrads)
North Park (1900 undergrads) > St. Thomas (5800 undergrads)
Chicago (5600 undergrads) > Emory (6600 undergrads)
Brandeis (3700 undergrads) > Tufts (5000 undergrads)

Enrollment size matters in high school in terms of sports. It doesn't matter in college.

I would agree with your overall point with one caveat.  Among academically very competitive schools with low to very low admit rates I would argue that size does matter.  A UAA with 5000-6000 students has more leeway in terms of number of recruits and stretching a little (if they want to) than a Haverford with just 1200 students.  The selectivity also limits the pool of potential recruits.

As an aside I'm sensing that there is a trend towards these mid-sized elite schools versus their LAC counterparts, which is not entirely unrelated to the current popularity of a school like Tufts which fits the UAA profile more than the NESCAC one.

As for NYU, I think that was a legit question, if for no other reason than the opportunity to study and play in NYC.  Aside from what already was noted, the costs of NYU (the school itself) + the city are astronomical.  And NYU is notoriously awful with aid.  One of my kids was dying to go to NYU and got in, but they offered us $1000 in aid so she picked the much more generous Univ of Rochester. 

[Gregory Sager]

UAA and NESCAC rosters are exactly the same size on average (28.5 players), so it doesn't appear that UAA programs have more recruiting slots available than do their NESCAC counterparts.

[Mr.Right]

Was just commenting on a Brandeis post in the UAA thread and made me realize the quality of the opponents they face in their conference. I looked at this year's standings as I don't get to follow the UAA as much as I hope and saw NYU at the bottom. After looking at their UAA performance in recent years, I was shocked. NYU's enrollment, granted the multitude of programs they offer, is much larger than the average D3 school (26,000 undergrad students was the most recent number I found). How is it that a university of NYU's caliber with such a large enrollment, foreign student attractiveness, and in one of the most desirable cities in the world not have a better soccer team? It made me think of University of Chicago in the sense that they're both in the middle of a big city with rigorous academics. NYU's campus is in Manhattan and I can't imagine they practice there, simply not enough space. Is that a contributing factor that might turn recruits off? I really hope it's not because they have a woman coach, as Kim Wyant is a largely decorated women's soccer figure. I know they made the Final 4 in the mid-late 2000's but ever since then, it seems like they have been underperforming. I'm sure someone has more knowledge about the program and I would appreciate it if they could share it, because I was completely surprised that they were not consistently at the top of the standings with the attractiveness of the university.

If I had to list reasons why recruits would not want to go to NYU, there are a couple of them.

1. The practices: like you said, they don't have room to practice. I believe they practice at the Manhattan Jasper's facility, which is a long way from campus. This is also where they play their home games, and they usually take a 45 min subway ride to get there. This in itself, having to commute 1.5 hours each day at such a rigorous school must not be fun at all. Better get used to studying on the train.
2. The school. A school like that does not get a lot of support from students. Just like at all the other UAA schools, there is a bit of a divide between the student athletes and the students. At Brandeis, its tough to get students to walk down the hill on a Friday night to watch the ranked men's team play, imagine trying to get them to drive 45 minutes for a home game.
3. The coach. Like you said, its unfortunate, but there are a lot of people who may not want to play for a woman coach. Add in their recent record, and there isn't really a reason why soccer should be on your top 5 reasons of going to NYU. Students who go there would go there for studies first and foremost, and then have soccer as a sort of extra curricular.

I would have to totally agree. I think the bigger problem of the three would be the commuting every day if in fact that is what they do. I know they play their home games there but did not realize they also practiced there as well. That has got to be a massive inconvenience. To bad they couldn't do what St.John's does and put a field on top of a building on campus. I would imagine they have exhausted that option but just cannot make it work for whatever reason.

Roster size has nothing to do with it. With 26,000 Undergrads compared to Brandeis 3700 is a massive difference. As a coach you would have more "slots" or options as admissions would allow WAY more "tips"I would imagine. So you should be able to take more risks on players than say a Brandeis. Still I am not all familiar with NYU admissions and it is quite possible that they do not care about athletics and give coaches no more options than any other school.

[jknezek]

This story goes back 20+ years at this point, so calling it stale is being generous. However, in my senior class in h.s. the number 15 student, a close friend with a bunch of non-athletic extra-curriculars and a ridiculous SAT score, was denied a spot at Johns Hopkins. The number 65 student in our class, an all-conference football player, was offered and accepted a slot at JHU. He was a good student, a nice guy, a friend, but he wasn't her caliber academically and didn't have her test scores.

Huge schools like the UAA schools and, in this case JHU, can slide an athlete through that way. It doesn't hurt their stats at all to stretch on some athletes in a 1500+ person class. The sub 500 per class schools can't do that so easily, or at least not at the same volume, without hurting their rankings.

[Mr.Right]

This story goes back 20+ years at this point, so calling it stale is being generous. However, in my senior class in h.s. the number 15 student, a close friend with a bunch of non-athletic extra-curriculars and a ridiculous SAT score, was denied a spot at Johns Hopkins. The number 65 student in our class, an all-conference football player, was offered and accepted a slot at JHU. He was a good student, a nice guy, a friend, but he wasn't her caliber academically and didn't have her test scores.

Huge schools like the UAA schools and, in this case JHU, can slide an athlete through that way. It doesn't hurt their stats at all to stretch on some athletes in a 1500+ person class. The sub 500 per class schools can't do that so easily, or at least not at the same volume, without hurting their rankings.

Correct BUT it si not just Hopkins and "Huge" schools that do this. It is almost every school even in D3. That was point as a school like Amherst or Williams could only slide 3-4 guys and gals in that would otherwise have no shot of getting in. That is why if NYU adheres to that same philosophy than they should be able to slide maybe 10 kids in that would not be able to get in otherwise. That being said I have no clue about NYU admissions and it is possible that they only allow that 3-4 number to slide in...

[jknezek]

This story goes back 20+ years at this point, so calling it stale is being generous. However, in my senior class in h.s. the number 15 student, a close friend with a bunch of non-athletic extra-curriculars and a ridiculous SAT score, was denied a spot at Johns Hopkins. The number 65 student in our class, an all-conference football player, was offered and accepted a slot at JHU. He was a good student, a nice guy, a friend, but he wasn't her caliber academically and didn't have her test scores.

Huge schools like the UAA schools and, in this case JHU, can slide an athlete through that way. It doesn't hurt their stats at all to stretch on some athletes in a 1500+ person class. The sub 500 per class schools can't do that so easily, or at least not at the same volume, without hurting their rankings.

Correct BUT it si not just Hopkins and "Huge" schools that do this. It is almost every school even in D3. That was point as a school like Amherst or Williams could only slide 3-4 guys and gals in that would otherwise have no shot of getting in. That is why if NYU adheres to that same philosophy than they should be able to slide maybe 10 kids in that would not be able to get in otherwise. That being said I have no clue about NYU admissions and it is possible that they only allow that 3-4 number to slide in...

I agree. But someone said size doesn't matter and, to some small extent, I disagree. This is where it can matter. That's all.

[Mr.Right]

This story goes back 20+ years at this point, so calling it stale is being generous. However, in my senior class in h.s. the number 15 student, a close friend with a bunch of non-athletic extra-curriculars and a ridiculous SAT score, was denied a spot at Johns Hopkins. The number 65 student in our class, an all-conference football player, was offered and accepted a slot at JHU. He was a good student, a nice guy, a friend, but he wasn't her caliber academically and didn't have her test scores.

Huge schools like the UAA schools and, in this case JHU, can slide an athlete through that way. It doesn't hurt their stats at all to stretch on some athletes in a 1500+ person class. The sub 500 per class schools can't do that so easily, or at least not at the same volume, without hurting their rankings.

Correct BUT it si not just Hopkins and "Huge" schools that do this. It is almost every school even in D3. That was point as a school like Amherst or Williams could only slide 3-4 guys and gals in that would otherwise have no shot of getting in. That is why if NYU adheres to that same philosophy than they should be able to slide maybe 10 kids in that would not be able to get in otherwise. That being said I have no clue about NYU admissions and it is possible that they only allow that 3-4 number to slide in...

I agree. But someone said size doesn't matter and, to some small extent, I disagree. This is where it can matter. That's all.

Yes I am agreeing with you. As usual size does matter

[NESCAC43]

NYU's enrollment, granted the multitude of programs they offer, is much larger than the average D3 school (26,000 undergrad students was the most recent number I found). How is it that a university of NYU's caliber with such a large enrollment, foreign student attractiveness, and in one of the most desirable cities in the world not have a better soccer team?

I'm always baffled when people quote enrollment figures as though they should be some sort of metric of a school's athletic success, or lack thereof. Unless a school has a coach who isn't doing his or her job, no coach in D3 creates a team from the student body at large. He or she recruits student-athletes who arrive on campus with the specific intention to play for that coach's team. In other words, enrollment size is irrelevant, because the players listed on the roster were specifically brought to that school to play that particular sport.

Take a look at this year's Final Four, and how each side got to Greensboro, in terms of enrollment:

Messiah (2800 undergrads) > Rochester (5100 undergrads)
North Park (1900 undergrads) > St. Thomas (5800 undergrads)
Chicago (5600 undergrads) > Emory (6600 undergrads)
Brandeis (3700 undergrads) > Tufts (5000 undergrads)

Enrollment size matters in high school in terms of sports. It doesn't matter in college.

You just selected four matchups (8 teams) all within 4,700 students of each other. We're talking about a university with 26,000 students! That is a 20,000 student difference from the highest enrollment you just listed. My point is not that the higher enrollment, the better your team should be. My point is with an enrollment significantly higher than that of your competition with the caliber of school you are attending, I would expect NYU to have a better soccer team. As someone pointed out earlier, sliding in a few recruits with sub-par academic performance in high school (in relation to other applicants) is easier at a school with higher enrollments than those with < 5,000 students as it is less of a percentage you are making an "exception" for. As for the reasons people have suggested for why recruits may not choose NYU, I now can see how practice can be a logistical nightmare travel-wise.

[rolldeisroll]

NYU's enrollment, granted the multitude of programs they offer, is much larger than the average D3 school (26,000 undergrad students was the most recent number I found). How is it that a university of NYU's caliber with such a large enrollment, foreign student attractiveness, and in one of the most desirable cities in the world not have a better soccer team?

I'm always baffled when people quote enrollment figures as though they should be some sort of metric of a school's athletic success, or lack thereof. Unless a school has a coach who isn't doing his or her job, no coach in D3 creates a team from the student body at large. He or she recruits student-athletes who arrive on campus with the specific intention to play for that coach's team. In other words, enrollment size is irrelevant, because the players listed on the roster were specifically brought to that school to play that particular sport.

Take a look at this year's Final Four, and how each side got to Greensboro, in terms of enrollment:

Messiah (2800 undergrads) > Rochester (5100 undergrads)
North Park (1900 undergrads) > St. Thomas (5800 undergrads)
Chicago (5600 undergrads) > Emory (6600 undergrads)
Brandeis (3700 undergrads) > Tufts (5000 undergrads)

Enrollment size matters in high school in terms of sports. It doesn't matter in college.

You just selected four matchups (8 teams) all within 4,700 students of each other. We're talking about a university with 26,000 students! That is a 20,000 student difference from the highest enrollment you just listed. My point is not that the higher enrollment, the better your team should be. My point is with an enrollment significantly higher than that of your competition with the caliber of school you are attending, I would expect NYU to have a better soccer team. As someone pointed out earlier, sliding in a few recruits with sub-par academic performance in high school (in relation to other applicants) is easier at a school with higher enrollments than those with < 5,000 students as it is less of a percentage you are making an "exception" for. As for the reasons people have suggested for why recruits may not choose NYU, I now can see how practice can be a logistical nightmare travel-wise.

Along these lines, if you are even checking out NYU at this point, you must be looking at academics first. Anyone looking to play soccer at a D3 school will be looking at other schools as well, that offer a better program. Thats just the truth of it. Factoring in the 1.5 hour commute which costs money, and valuable studying time, there is little to no time for fooling around and not doing schoolwork. At most schools, practices either go from 4-6 or 6-8. If they start at 4, they should be at the facilites by 3:30, which means they leave campus around 2:00. God forbid there is a train delay that causes 75% of your players to be late.

On the flip side if they end at 8:00, give them a half hour to shower and change, they dont get back to the "campus" until 9:00, and still have to eat. Starting homework at 10:00 each night isn't a great way to have success. There is just a lot wrong with the set-up, and unless they can change it, I don't see any big players going there. Maybe there will be some hidden gems that can bring the program up, and prove the coaches that didn't want them wrong, but it's unlikely

[Gregory Sager]

Still I am not all familiar with NYU admissions and it is quite possible that they do not care about athletics and give coaches no more options than any other school.

That being said I have no clue about NYU admissions and it is possible that they only allow that 3-4 number to slide in...

This is exactly my point. You don't know how NYU manages its admissions policies. Presumably, NESCAC23 doesn't, either. You can't simply tally up enrollment totals and conclude, "Well, School X is a whole lot bigger than School Y, so it must be easier to recruit there ... so why can't School X do better?", without a working knowledge of how that school's admissions process works vis-a-vis the considerations given to athletics participation among applicants, among other things.

NYU's enrollment, granted the multitude of programs they offer, is much larger than the average D3 school (26,000 undergrad students was the most recent number I found). How is it that a university of NYU's caliber with such a large enrollment, foreign student attractiveness, and in one of the most desirable cities in the world not have a better soccer team?

I'm always baffled when people quote enrollment figures as though they should be some sort of metric of a school's athletic success, or lack thereof. Unless a school has a coach who isn't doing his or her job, no coach in D3 creates a team from the student body at large. He or she recruits student-athletes who arrive on campus with the specific intention to play for that coach's team. In other words, enrollment size is irrelevant, because the players listed on the roster were specifically brought to that school to play that particular sport.

Take a look at this year's Final Four, and how each side got to Greensboro, in terms of enrollment:

Messiah (2800 undergrads) > Rochester (5100 undergrads)
North Park (1900 undergrads) > St. Thomas (5800 undergrads)
Chicago (5600 undergrads) > Emory (6600 undergrads)
Brandeis (3700 undergrads) > Tufts (5000 undergrads)

Enrollment size matters in high school in terms of sports. It doesn't matter in college.

You just selected four matchups (8 teams) all within 4,700 students of each other. We're talking about a university with 26,000 students! That is a 20,000 student difference from the highest enrollment you just listed. My point is not that the higher enrollment, the better your team should be. My point is with an enrollment significantly higher than that of your competition with the caliber of school you are attending, I would expect NYU to have a better soccer team. As someone pointed out earlier, sliding in a few recruits with sub-par academic performance in high school (in relation to other applicants) is easier at a school with higher enrollments than those with < 5,000 students as it is less of a percentage you are making an "exception" for.

And, again, unless you have insider knowledge of how NYU admissions works, your expectation is groundless. Look at the evidence, which goes far, far deeper than men's soccer. Here are the undergraduate enrollments of the UAA schools:

Brandeis	3,600
Carnegie Mellon	6,700
Case Western Reserve	5,100
Chicago	5,900
Emory	6,800
NYU	25,000
Rochester	6,300
Washington (MO)	7,500

Setting aside sports that are sponsored by fewer than half of the UAA's schools (e.g., wrestling and women's golf), you have to go all the way back to the 2009-10 school year to find NYU winning a UAA title in anything (for the record, it was men's cross-country). That's right; in UAA-sponsored sports in which most or all of the league's schools compete, the Fighting Violets are now in a department-wide title drought that's seven years long and counting. That's not simply a matter of the soccer pitch being a 45-minute subway ride from campus. That's the entire athletics department, across the board. There are clearly administrative decisions that have been made at NYU that affect the school's ability to compete in sports within its league.

And that's why enrollment size tells you nothing about NYU sports.

[blooter442]

Setting aside sports that are sponsored by fewer than half of the UAA's schools (e.g., wrestling and women's golf), you have to go all the way back to the 2009-10 school year to find NYU winning a UAA title in anything (for the record, it was men's cross-country).

Not so -- the Violets won the 2010-11 men's soccer title. http://uaasports.info/sports/msoc/MScoccer_Records.pdf

[PaulNewman]

Setting aside sports that are sponsored by fewer than half of the UAA's schools (e.g., wrestling and women's golf), you have to go all the way back to the 2009-10 school year to find NYU winning a UAA title in anything (for the record, it was men's cross-country).

Not so -- the Violets won the 2010-11 men's soccer title. http://uaasports.info/sports/msoc/MScoccer_Records.pdf

No, he meant except for that one 

It should be a posting requirement that all of us admit something we had wrong at least once a year.

All of the nit-picking (and I was absolutely right in terms of my nit-picking of course) obscures that NYU actually is an interesting case, for a number of reasons....

-- Located in the heart of arguably the greatest city on the planet

-- No campus really

-- Soccer teams practices and plays far away from "campus"

-- Large enrollment but virtually no interest in terms of athletic teams in terms of student support (and that's in comparison to a slew of or even most D3 schools where the majority of the student body -- large, medium, small or tiny -- have not thought about their school's men's (or women's) soccer program for even 10 seconds

-- The costs which even compared to other "I can't believe college costs 70K a year" places is astronomical

-- And now a woman as coach for a men's program (which actually seems fitting for NYU and NYC)

The question that hasn't been answered is whether the NYU admissions department gives more or less leeway in terms of athletic recruiting compared to similarly prestigious schools.

[midwest]

A data point of only one on NYU --but we knew a prospie interested in NYU who was told by the program that everyone interested in playing comes to tryouts, the team is selected then, and there is no admissions bump for prospective players.