Schools that Should Be Better

[SierraFD3soccer]

Offering Salisbury (MD) Seagulls as a school that should be better.  Academics not part of the equation unless you are looking for high acceptance rate, but it checks the box for a lot of kids and parents. State school, inexpensive, large student body, good recruiting base for players and coaches.  And they beat Mary Washington this week so congrats despite a poor record.

Tons of Maryland kids in NESCAC,but Maryland has a lot of youth players so they should be competitive .

Maybe, but Salisbury is on the Eastern Shore which is long way from the Balt/Wash Corridor which is where most of the Maryland soccer kids grow up. Also known primarily as a d3 lacrosse powerhouse and not soccer.  If a kid were to stay in Maryland, there are many in the Balt/Wash corridor which are more successful like St. Mary's College of Maryland (also a state school).  The kids going NESCAC are generally Balt. prep school kids (or DC area prep school kids) who possibly could play for a medium to lower D1 program, but opted to go for academics/prestige. 

[Ejay]

Offering Salisbury (MD) Seagulls as a school that should be better.  Academics not part of the equation unless you are looking for high acceptance rate, but it checks the box for a lot of kids and parents. State school, inexpensive, large student body, good recruiting base for players and coaches.  And they beat Mary Washington this week so congrats despite a poor record.

100% agree. They were on my list for the exact readings you mentioned. I just didn't include them in my first post.

[Another Mom]

Re schools that are academic,  and therefore can attract students because of their stellar reputations-- yes, but the pool of top soccer players that also are at the top academically is not huge. Therefore while they can draw students towards them, they cannot recruit most soccer players. Swarthmore would be a great example:-)

[Hopkins92]

Offering Salisbury (MD) Seagulls as a school that should be better.  Academics not part of the equation unless you are looking for high acceptance rate, but it checks the box for a lot of kids and parents. State school, inexpensive, large student body, good recruiting base for players and coaches.  And they beat Mary Washington this week so congrats despite a poor record.

Tons of Maryland kids in NESCAC,but Maryland has a lot of youth players so they should be competitive .

Maybe, but Salisbury is on the Eastern Shore which is long way from the Balt/Wash Corridor which is where most of the Maryland soccer kids grow up. Also known primarily as a d3 lacrosse powerhouse and not soccer.  If a kid were to stay in Maryland, there are many in the Balt/Wash corridor which are more successful like St. Mary's College of Maryland (also a state school).  The kids going NESCAC are generally Balt. prep school kids (or DC area prep school kids) who possibly could play for a medium to lower D1 program, but opted to go for academics/prestige.

This.

Salisbury is in the middle of nowhere and doesn't even have St. Mary's allure of being right on the water... stunning campus with a D1(equivalent) sailing program. Salisbury would be better off if it moved closer to the beach, as it is, I think it's a solid 90 minute drive.

And as a Marylander that has sent two kids off to college (and lived here myself during the college-hunting days), Salisbury just isn't on the radar for most folks, at least not here in hot-bed for academics and soccer Montgomery County.

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Staying in MD - Hood should be better than they are, IMO. Frederick is an up-and-coming city with a vibrant downtown area. The campus is nice and the field is decent. It's not a tremendous academic school, but it's pretty under-rated (again IMO). (EDIT: It's actually better regarded these days... I need to always remember that schools have changed a lot (in some cases) from even when my kids were looking.)

[Ejay]

Re schools that are academic,  and therefore can attract students because of their stellar reputations-- yes, but the pool of top soccer players that also are at the top academically is not huge. Therefore while they can draw students towards them, they cannot recruit most soccer players. Swarthmore would be a great example:-)

I disagree. I think the consensus says that NESCSC and UAA are the two strongest conferences and they're certainly at the top of the academic heap.

[PaulNewman]

LOL, when I saw deutschfan's post I got that feeling one gets when seeing a friend walking into something you can't protect them from.  A la "don't mess with Texas," there should be a "don't mess with North Park" flag.  And in truth, that's how almost all of us feel about our schools.

I do think the preoccupation with "off the charts academic schools" is a tricky but really, really important topic.  Maybe I'll try to talk about it more in another venue.  I do think it is legitimate to wonder why schools (and we pretty much hit all of them) that check so many boxes don't do better with their soccer programs or with athletics in general.  But, and I think I've said something similar recently, the percentage of the population who thinks about high end/elite colleges relative to the general population, or even the population interested in college more generally, is pretty small.  My kid went to a large public high school in MA and although many more could have in terms of credentials, probably less than 10 (maybe less than 5) out of 1500+ students did the whole round of college visits through Maine, NY, PA, CT, OH, NC, VA, etc.  I never considered for one second that I wasn't going to take my kid around the horn to see at least 15-20 "really good schools" with a goal of him getting in the best school he could that also would be the best fit for him, but we were a real outlier in that regard in our community (which wasn't Wellesley or Newton or Andover but not unsophisticated either).  When you read the rosters of some of the highest end colleges they are flooded with kids from some of the most elite prep schools in the United States.  This is not to say that there isn't a huge industry that caters to this demographic for some obvious reasons like $$$, but the amount of focus on it I think tends to yield a very distorted picture.  The large majority of potential college players probably don't care whether or not they're accessing a top 50 LAC or top 50 university.  And indeed, that's another whole discussion, because many of us are so saturated in our demographic (and striving to extend it even higher) that we actually come to believe in a "top 50," as though some school being listed at #17 in USNWR is a real thing.  And we are so knee deep in it that I guess in some ways it ends up becoming real (at least for us). 

As for Oberlin, the Yeomen have had a couple of really good years over the last decade but in general they have been a .500 or below program.  Oberlin is not a school one thinks of as being a haven for athletes given its very progressive, artsy, conservatory, environmental vibe.  There are some similarities with Vassar...another school that one wouldn't think of as attracting a ton of athletes, but for whatever reason Vassar overall has been a consistently stronger soccer program (good, but not elite I would say).  All that said, Oberlin should be better for the reasons @kuiper cited.  The rural/suburban but very close to a major metropolitan area is a combo that appeals to a fair amount of folks.

[4231CenterBack]

Re schools that are academic,  and therefore can attract students because of their stellar reputations-- yes, but the pool of top soccer players that also are at the top academically is not huge. Therefore while they can draw students towards them, they cannot recruit most soccer players. Swarthmore would be a great example:-)

I disagree. I think the consensus says that NESCSC and UAA are the two strongest conferences and they're certainly at the top of the academic heap.

And the NESCACs openly relax their admissions requirements to populate their sports teams. 

[deutschfan]

I concur with Ejay on this.  The dominance of the NESCAC schools including Tufts incredible run, and the emergence of the University of Chicago as a consistent national powerhouse supports the notion that soccer is a thinking man's game and the schools with the greatest thinkers have had the most recent success.  I also believe that the top academic D3 programs have an expanded pool of players as many D1 candidates will use their soccer to obtain admission at a top academic D3 school that far surpasses academically the D1 programs that have shown interest in them.  As for North Park, Kedzie and Foster is not Old Town, Wrigleyville, or the Miracle Mile which happens to have been designated a high crime area.  There are Christian schools outside the city in beautiful areas including Wheaton and Augustana.  Augustana has Swedish roots and yet has an abysmal record and a roster that doesn't include a bunch of Scandinavian impact players.  North Park has done a remarkable job recruiting internationals and should be commended for it.  That being said, I would list it as one of the top over-achievers in men's D3 soccer.

[Kuiper]

Re schools that are academic,  and therefore can attract students because of their stellar reputations-- yes, but the pool of top soccer players that also are at the top academically is not huge. Therefore while they can draw students towards them, they cannot recruit most soccer players. Swarthmore would be a great example:-)

I tend to think the ability to recruit nationally (and internationally) v. locally or regionally helps to offset the lower pool of realistic admissions candidates, but that also means the coaches have to do more work to find the pool of players who are candidates for strong academic schools. 

There's was a Simple Coach interview with the head coach of, I think, RPI where the coach said that once he refocused his task on finding great pre-engineering students who also played soccer, his job was in some ways easier because, although it was a smaller pool, there were also a smaller pool of schools that would be acceptable to those students.  In his world, he said, if a kid told him he got into MIT, he would tell him to go there, but if the kid didn't get into MIT, it wasn't like that kid was going to some school that didn't offer engineering and he had a shot.

Another thing that great coaches do is find kids early and help them build their academic profiles to be a fit (effectively expanding the pool of kids).  For example, there's a kid from a family I know in Compton (a rougher neighborhood south of Los Angeles) who is being raised by a single mom who really wants to get him to college.  She didn't go and there's only one uncle in the family who went to a Cal State, but she's determined and he's serious about finding a way out.  The kid's a strong MLS Next player and he's a pretty good student - 3.7 GPA as a Junior at a public math and science magnet high school.  So, he's not a sure thing, but it's not out of the question either.  Since she's had him e-mailing coaches early, he has multiple coaches who have been talking to him extensively for over a year now about what courses he needs to take, what grades he needs in those courses, what he needs to do in terms of test scores to improve his chances (even at test optional schools) etc.  The kid likely would never move away from his family for just a school where he could play on a good soccer team, but you can be sure he would (or at least that's what his mom says) to give him a chance at a top academic school that can provide a chance for generational change in his family.

[PaulNewman]

I concur with Ejay on this.  The dominance of the NESCAC schools including Tufts incredible run, and the emergence of the University of Chicago as a consistent national powerhouse supports the notion that soccer is a thinking man's game and the schools with the greatest thinkers have had the most recent success.  I also believe that the top academic D3 programs have an expanded pool of players as many D1 candidates will use their soccer to obtain admission at a top academic D3 school that far surpasses academically the D1 programs that have shown interest in them.  As for North Park, Kedzie and Foster is not Old Town, Wrigleyville, or the Miracle Mile which happens to have been designated a high crime area.  There are Christian schools outside the city in beautiful areas including Wheaton and Augustana.  Augustana has Swedish roots and yet has an abysmal record and a roster that doesn't include a bunch of Scandinavian impact players.  North Park has done a remarkable job recruiting internationals and should be commended for it.  That being said, I would list it as one of the top over-achievers in men's D3 soccer.

You really think soccer IQ tracks parallel to, for lack of better words, "academic IQ"?

[Gregory Sager]

Re schools that are academic,  and therefore can attract students because of their stellar reputations-- yes, but the pool of top soccer players that also are at the top academically is not huge. Therefore while they can draw students towards them, they cannot recruit most soccer players. Swarthmore would be a great example:-)

I disagree. I think the consensus says that NESCSC and UAA are the two strongest conferences and they're certainly at the top of the academic heap.

The NESCAC and the UAA amount to nineteen schools between them. That's nineteen schools out of the 414 schools that have D3 men's soccer programs ... to say nothing of all of the D1, D2, NAIA, NCCAA, USCAA, and NJCAA schools that have men's soccer programs as well.

You can't really extrapolate anything about the size of the pool of top soccer players who are also high academic achievers based upon a mere nineteen schools.

I concur with Ejay on this.  The dominance of the NESCAC schools including Tufts incredible run, and the emergence of the University of Chicago as a consistent national powerhouse supports the notion that soccer is a thinking man's game and the schools with the greatest thinkers have had the most recent success.

And you, too, fall victim to the bias of small sample size. Plus, your athletics focus is too parochial. The NESCAC schools and the UAA schools (not just the U of C) tend to be good at most sports, not just men's soccer. It has nothing to do with it being "a thinking man's game;" the NESCAC and the UAA are also two of the top five or so leagues in D3 men's basketball, f'rinstance, and the next time that anyone refers to college basketball as being "a thinking man's game" will be the first.

It's all about academic cachet, not about the nature of the sport.

[NoSuchThingAsOffsides]

Wells College

Other than a period from about 2013-2016, they have never been very strong, but since 2016, they've fallen off a cliff.  This year, they are 0-14 right now and the most wins they have had in a season since 2016 is 5.  It's not an uber strong academic school, but it was always viewed as a pretty good school and the cross enrollment options with Cornell and Ithaca might make it more attractive for some students who want the small liberal arts college and more academic options.  What happened to them?  I only count 17 players on their current roster (maybe 15 are real players) and almost all are freshman and sophomores.

Dan Kane left after the 2016 season for Oswego after doing some heavy lifting to build them up. The school is tiny and I don't think the HC job is compensated well, even by d3 standards. Pandemic hurt Wells hard as tuition makes up over 75% of their revenue.

[PaulNewman]

The tournament cannot start fast enough!

[Another Mom]

Re schools that are academic,  and therefore can attract students because of their stellar reputations-- yes, but the pool of top soccer players that also are at the top academically is not huge. Therefore while they can draw students towards them, they cannot recruit most soccer players. Swarthmore would be a great example:-)

I disagree. I think the consensus says that NESCSC and UAA are the two strongest conferences and they're certainly at the top of the academic heap.

And the NESCACs openly relax their admissions requirements to populate their sports teams.

Of course they do. But they cannot relax them beyond a certain point. High academic recruiting is something I know about, having gone through that journey for several years with my son.

[deutschfan]

Agree on that.  Also totally disagree with Greg's take on soccer not being a thinking man's sport.  Here is just one description of the game--"Soccer is 90 minutes of system-thinking in action. Success relies on dispersed decision-making, constant communication, and the commitment of an entire team to a single system to reach a common goal. It is also the most popular sport in the world."  American football has set plays, baseball has standard responses to pretty much every scenario, and basketball is far less fluid than soccer.  I would submit that the reason why the NESCAC and UAA are successful in most sports is because their academic prowess has caused them to attract top athletes.  That doesn't mean that among the various sports soccer doesn't require the most thinking.