It's amazing to me how bad bad D3 track is

Most D3 schools are worse academically than D1 schools.

You're missing the whole point of D3 when you thought, "you still probably have to be pretty good to be on a college team." You can be on a D3 *without* being pretty good, and that's okay.

have you considered in your global analysis drawn from MUW that you are extrapolating from how well men do running at a school that's most won't realize is coed that is still named "......university for women" and has 23% men in slightly over 2300 students? how many 18 year old boys researching college or sports recruitment skip it entirely based on the name?

heck, back in my day, i still thought vassar was a girl's school. i wouldn't have considered it because it didn't have track until the last decade or so. but they have admitted boys and had a soccer team for decades. and they are still like 62% female.

vaunted football program UMHB, which used to be seen as baylor's women's college, is still like 35% men. but their national football success has changed the athletics department's image for recruiting boys.

In NYC, D3 CCNY has at least ten alums who've won Nobels. Most of them are from BITD, but still.

i think one thing the OP is missing is "beggars can't be choosers" and 1000-1500 kid enrollments. my LAC was that small. a 25 man soccer team mixes half a dozen kids who could play in a higher division with some kids who barely played HS. there were usually a handful of people who could play but wanted to be a student or hippie. a handful more had quit the team because they signed up thinking they'd start and it didn't happen. we'd usually have like 27-30 out for tryouts and cut down 2-5 people.

TF and XC would be similarly diverse. the top handful would compete for conference or in a good year nationals. but the rest are what you can recruit or get to join the team from a 1000 kid campus at a good academic school, with zero scholarships. if they are D1-good, every state school in the state seemed to have track.

last, but related, you're talking about a very very very anonymous conference. this isn't williams and amherst and the rest of the nescac list. it's not chicago or NYU or that UAA bunch. it's not the claremont schools and occidental and caltech west coast. it's not even a conference punctuated by "MIT" or "grinnell" or "swarthmore." it's a bunch of mostly missouri schools no one has heard of, only 4 or so of which have enrollments over 1000.

yeah, if i had a conference where the school names are all anonymous in prestige, several schools were like 300 or 500 kids total, i'd be taking anyone who showed up for any sports team we had. principia i have seen in guidebooks for a decent quality student body but like if you aren't christian scientist they aren't interested. otherwise it's a bunch of "who?" that don't offer scholarships. the conference dropped football and one school has already closed.

based on my experience playing teams like scott gallagher from the area, i suspect the only thing they'd be any good at would be soccer, cherry picking kids from the st. louis area who don't make D1.

last, meta point, but with a non-college sports OP, you may have a demanding college at which you take 15-18 hours. you may have an overworking difficult coach who wants long practices or high mileage. at D3 there is not usually some distinct athletic dorm/ classes/ profs/ tutors setup for athletes like at some state school D1. there may be hours of homework or reading. oh, and go to practice and try and train well. do a few hours of class then play a game or have an evening meet. balance food you need to keep going vs. eating well for sports. fend off party invitations when tomorrow is gameday.

it's a little easier to do a 9-5, control your food, train exactly how you want.

One thing nobody's mentioned is that yeah, 21 minutes did score last year, but there were only 8 runners, so they all scored. If you even look at the SAME conference the previous year (when they only had 6 score), it took sub-17 to score. Not to say that's world-beating, but it does seem to show that 'scoring at conference with 21+' isn't exactly the norm even for the SLIAC.

D3 is carried by like 4 prestigious institutions. The idea that kids run D3 because they are "academically serious" is nonsense. You can be just as academically serious and run for Stanford or Harvard. It's all about whether you're fast enough or not. It's that simple.

I'm Canadian. I didn't go to any of them. I'm just listing top research universities. Of course there are tonnes of other top academic D1 schools that I didn't list.

Well, a prof from UW just won the Nobel prize in chemistry yesterday. But he was a student at UC Berkeley and Harvard....which are, you guessed it, D1 schools!

These takes and some of the ones in this thread are unfortunate. If you know anything about college running, is that D3 nationwide is incredibly good and keeps getting better. There's almost 500 D3 schools so of course there are slow schools and conferences. If youre questioning the quality of a D3 basketball athlete is, go play one. Maybe you'll learn something (I hope its Duncan Robinson)

There are lots of small schools with enrollments under 1,000 that are D3 or NAIA, where the sports teams are basically like clubs on campus.

D3 Top 25 XC Rankings according to Run Recruit. Those bolded are top 50 in Forbes Academic Rankings

#1
Wisconsin-La Crosse

#2
Wartburg

#3
Pomona-Pitzer

#4
Wisconsin-Whitewater

#5
North Central

#6
Johns Hopkins University

#7
RPI (Rensselaer Poly)

#8
SUNY Geneseo

#9
Carnegie Mellon

#10
George Fox

#11
NYU

#12
MIT

#13
Tufts

#14
St Olaf College

#15
Calvin

#16
Lynchburg

#17
Middlebury

#18
Washington U in St. Louis

#19
Amherst

#20
Chicago

#21
Williams

#22
Emory

#23
Washington & Lee

#24
John Carroll

#25
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

D1 Top 25 XC Rankings according to Run Recruit. Those bolded are top 50 in Forbes Academic Rankings

#1
Oklahoma State

#2
BYU

#3
Arkansas

#4
Iowa State

#5
Notre Dame

#6
Northern Arizona

#6
Wake Forest

#8
New Mexico

#9
Stanford

#10
Wisconsin

#11
North Carolina

#12
Alabama

#13
Washington

#14
Michigan

#15
Eastern Kentucky

#16
Colorado

#17
Princeton

#18
Butler

#19
Villanova

#20
Harvard

#21
Virginia

#22
Oregon

#23
Syracuse

#24
Cal Baptist

#25
Portland

I probably could have emphasized more that I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. A I'd say the same thing in response to a bunch of what VIT said. I'd lose to the median D3 runner for sure. I just kind of thought I'd be the worst in all of D3 and I'm kind of surprised that isn't really the case. I'm worse at basketball than I am at running so maybe I would lose to the worst D3 player there, but if it's like running I know people who wouldn't.

This is usefull, but plenty of the non bolded d3 schools are highly rated by other lists.

Pomona, Geneseo, Carnegie Melon, Tufts, Middlebury, Claremont for example.

Yup, 100% correct. I just wanted to show that when it comes to distance running at least, it appears regardless of division, your top academic schools are well represented as being amongst the best schools for distance running, which is interesting when you factor that Ivy League schools give no scholarships, there are very little full scholarships for running in general and none of Div 3 give scholarships. And MANY of those referenced schools are EXPENSIVE. What this tells me is that academic prestige is HEAVILY valued, regardless of division.

To be honest, I think people put too much of an emphasis on prestige, especially for undergrad. I think things would be a lot better if there wasn't this "pressure" to go to a "prestigious" school. Pick a major that is in demand, go to a "respectable" school, make sure they have good coaching if you want to run and go for it, regardless of whether it is D1 or 3, there are options out there that won't bankrupt you.

Vassar has been coed for over 50 years, and 62% female is about average for colleges these days.

Largely because all the Jews (1/4 of Nobel laureates all time) went there back when the Ivies had affirmative action against Jews.

Still, that's more than most countries.

For D3, the whole UAA and NESCAC are generally strong academically, among others, as others have mentioned.

D2, the best I can think of are Michigan Tech (D1 for hockey) and Colorado School of Mines.

Hahahaha. You must be from Geneseo, or under a rock.

"Ivy League schools give no scholarships, there are very little full scholarships for running in general and none of Div 3 give scholarships. And MANY of those referenced schools are EXPENSIVE."

Too this point, while none of those schools have athletic aid, and the Ivies have neither athletic aid or merit aid, many are generous with need-based aid. I know of people that attended Ivies and it ended up costing less than a state school would have cost. Some were athletes and some were not and some of the schools were in-state. It's a mistake to rule out some of the really expensive schools just because they are seemingly very expensive. Many have very large endowments. Families can have incomes well into the six figures and still get need-based aid at some of the more academically highly ranked D3s (UAAs, NESCAC, 5Cs, etc) and the Ivies. It is always best to work all of the numbers. Many are surprised.