If you were a top high recruit who had good offers from every school, where would you choose?

Of course it does. LOL

heh fair enough.

I'm mostly going on reputation rather than just numbers....My sense is that Dartmouth and Princeton have institutionally decided to put an emphasis on undergraduate education, while other schools like Cornell and Harvard have not made that commitment. I'm not sure about Stanford.

It is interesting how some of the same people provide different opinions depending on the thread. Everyone all of a sudden says athletes should pay full price for Harvard but then they switch to a different thread and claim that elite runners should attend a school like NAU.

It's not where you go to school, but what you major in that matters. Some degrees have better job prospects than others. That said, certain Scholls like Stanford and the Ivies have lots of rich kids that could make for some useful connections. It's not the school's academics lead to better jobs, it's the networking that makes them stand out.

That said, I would look for a school that has my degree, is affordable, and has a good team culture and atmosphere that I like, and doesn't have a long laundry list of injuries and transfers.

You are 1/2 correct. Engineering pays more than psychology but a psychology degree from Harvard will pay way more than one from NC State.

Cornell for sure, top tier academics, fun school, perfect training

I just don’t understand all the love for Cornell. My daughter chose a good academic/athletic/team culture P5 school over Cornell and the benefits were huge. Zero debt, multiple conference titles and national appearances and she’s now in med school. I can’t imagine she would choose differently if she had it to do over again.

I'll just throw this into the mix of your discussion... Some people are actually successful in life, financially and otherwise, and they didn't even attend an ivy league school or go to stanford, or mit or cal tech or 'your name here'

have at it, folks

Honestly, if I were making the decision today as a top high school recruit, I do think NAU would be my first choice. The laid-back, outdoorsy atmosphere of Flagstaff, the team culture, and being coached by Mike Smith all sound like an awesome college experience to me.

It's worth mentioning that, while I enjoyed taking classes in a wide variety of departments during undergrad, the education field has always been the place I saw myself working professionally. Not only is that a field where connections and prestige matter less, but NAU actually does have pretty strong education/teaching offerings. If I wanted to get a masters at one of the elite education grad schools (Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, etc.), I could do that after enjoying my formative college years at NAU.

That said, I did enjoy the classes, size, and opportunities at my Ivy, so if NAU wouldn't take me, I'd probably look there next. FWIW, I was not a recruited athlete and my family received significant need-based aid.

Villanova

Interesting - I just went over this thread so far, and didn't see Oregon mentioned. How times have changed.

Take the L. And go back to remedial statistics.

Too many factors to list to consider (Majoring in? Part of the country? Weather? Size of school? Big football/basketball school?, etc....)

Whole host of schools around the country that have both elite running programs AND have excellent academic reputations - Stanford, Washington, Michigan, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Harvard, Georgetown, North Carolina, Virginia

If I was a top national runner and running profesional/Olympics was a reasonable goal NAU would be my top choice. If I was just an average runner I would probably choose UCLA or Cal Berkeley

Got downvoted for this, it's a nice school not far from home with a good running program. Sure Stanford education is good or whatever but I'd like to see my family lol, not everything is about becoming an engineer and making bombs for Raytheon

I don’t think you could go wrong at Wake Forest. Very strong academics, good moderate weather, great coaching and awesome classes.

all after Stanford on your list don’t have good “prestige”.

The hypothetical situation of this thread is that you are a top recruit who can go everywhere. It seems silly to choose NAU becasue nearly no runner will go pro and even the few who do, don't earn much money. It seems pretty short sighted to not take advantage of the opportunity to attend Stanford or Notre Dame or Michigan or Duke. the schools are much better and cost twice as much as NAU. It's like somebody offers you $320k but you choose to accept only $150k instead.