Big fish, small pond (D3) vs. Smaller fish, big pond

Matthew Boling should have gone to LSU.

Wise Old Man wrote:

If you had the talent level of a guy like Dhruvil Patel (5K pr of 13:51 in college) would you rather run D3 and be one of the all-time D3 greats (5000 record holder, NCAA xc champ, etc) or would you rather be a strong, but mostly ignored D1 runner (top 25-50 D1 runner in a given year)? Let’s say college quality and cost were a wash. Which would be a more satisfying athletic experience?

You're making it look like Dhruvil Patel was a guy expected to run 13:51 in college coming out of high school. No one would have picked him to run those times. So the situation you're really saying is "should Dhruvil Patel have transferred to a division 1 school for his senior year after showing at that point that he could run at a high level" and the answer is no. Why would you completely change everything for one year when you know what you're doing is working?

What you should be asking is "Should a 9:00 3200 guy in high school go to D3 to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond?" because let's be honest, just because someone runs 9:00 in the 3200 in high school does not mean they'll be nationally relevant in D1... But that type of person can immediately be an NCAA qualifier in the D3 level and with just a bit more improvement can be a D3 title contender. In that case I think they should go D1 and challenge themselves more. But Dhruvil's position of improving a ton from high school and finding himself able to compete at D1 does not mean he should transfer.

Harvard will have multiple guys go sub 14 this season. Their track times are way out if date. It is like saying Nico Young is a 2:06 800 runner.

Yes, I agree with you. I was just using Patel as an example, and maybe a poor one.

What you stated just happened at our HS. We have a boy, academic superstar, who ran 8:57 as a junior. He was in great demand by Pomona Pitzer, Williams, etc. For D1, no interest for sure at Stanford and no spot at Harvard or Princeton. He was only going to choose an absolute top academic school. He chose a 2nd tier (in terms of running, not academics) D1 Ivy rather than PP for example. Money was not a concern, but top academics and running environment were priorities.

Wise Old Man wrote:

If you had the talent level of a guy like Dhruvil Patel (5K pr of 13:51 in college) would you rather run D3 and be one of the all-time D3 greats (5000 record holder, NCAA xc champ, etc) or would you rather be a strong, but mostly ignored D1 runner (top 25-50 D1 runner in a given year)? Let’s say college quality and cost were a wash. Which would be a more satisfying athletic experience?

another one of these threads...oy. how often does this need to be asked?

first of all, if i'm to believe what i read in the thread about power 5 recruiting, dru patel would have been pissed on by most decent d1 programs with his h.s. times. so lets start with that.

but to answer the question directly: being D 1,2 or 3 is not what makes the experience satisfying. it is the wisdom and leadership of the coaching staff and the culture of the team. you can get good and bad at any level. patel had everything he needed at NCC. am i to assume that at a 9:20 hs guy he would have run faster at minnesota or penn st?

all good D3s have access to to enough big time meets that you never run out of competition anyway.

on this topic, the d3 glory days interview with dylan gearinger was pretty interesting in that they never asked the only question anyone in d3 cares about, which is why the hell did he quit the team at haverford after winning a national title the year before? am i to believe he wasn't getting good enough coaching from tom donnelly, or didn't have the teammates and training partners he needed? he went on and on about the great culture there also. just odd, and frankly it's terrible journalism not ask that question or deliver some sort of explanation.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

RichardRider wrote:

Not to mention having daily training partners that could help raise the game....

Nothing good comes from trying to keep up with superior runners. Running too hard in interval workouts and on easy days, will result in burning out.

Maybe for you. I was placed in appropriate training groups on harder days and was able to hang easily on easy days with superior athletes. By being around great athletes including Olympic Champions and Trials qualifiers, the mindset was probably more than you could comprehend. Sorry you had an average at best experience. I feel fortunate that the bar was quite high and the progress was very adequate over time. While it was an adjustment from hs where there was nobody to train with, I was not overtrained and avoided injury for 8 years while experiencing continued gains.

So yeah, actually, a lot of good came from what I mentioned. Including 25 years of training a lot of people that produced incredible results who also have gone on to coach many others to incredible results. Most have not had that experience so jt would be hard to truly understand.

Wise Old Man- I think you bring up an interesting aspect as opposed to the standard "which is better D1 or D3" argument that is a waste of time. When you look at high end academics, the D1 pool is very small. Stanford, The Ivies, maybe Duke, Rice and a few others, but the list is pretty minimal, and only Stanford, Harvard and Princeton really have competitive programs. Throw in the fact that the Ivies don't offer scholarships (which basically makes them D3 from a recruiting aspect) and you are left with even less. So what's a sub 9:00 HS runner with high academics supposed to do? Choosing a school like Yale provides the academics, but the XCTF program is not particularly strong. I'm not even sure they have had a sub 14 min 5k runner on the track the last 5 years, while a top D3 school like Williams has 2 on its roster right now. Does that make Williams a better environment? Absolutely not, it's subjective, but it's a tough decision, and ultimately as one of the earlier posters mentioned, its whats important to the individual athlete. What you get out of a running program and a college is completely different for everyone. And I wish more students would consider the bigger picture than just going for the big name to impress their friends or some 3rd rate program who give them the most money, but thats the world we live in.

There are way more top academic schools that are D1 than D3. And many have good distance programs.

Ivies

Stanford

Notre Dame

UNC

Wake

Georgetown

Villanova

Michigan

UVA

Texas

Wisconsin

Wow- Really? I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, but your list is a little ambitious. Wisconsin, Texas, Wake, really? University of Wisconsin had a 57% acceptance rate! Even Wake Forest was 32%. When we are looking at Amherst, Pomona, MIT, Williams, U of Chicago these are all under 10% with SAT's over 1500. I'll grant you Vanderbilt should have made my list, but your statement that Div 1 has better academics than Div 3 is ludicrous.

Nescac Dad wrote:

Wow- Really? I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, but your list is a little ambitious. Wisconsin, Texas, Wake, really? University of Wisconsin had a 57% acceptance rate! Even Wake Forest was 32%. When we are looking at Amherst, Pomona, MIT, Williams, U of Chicago these are all under 10% with SAT's over 1500. I'll grant you Vanderbilt should have made my list, but your statement that Div 1 has better academics than Div 3 is ludicrous.

Thank you. Your comments are spot on and really what I was trying to get at. I’m a SCIAC dad, so you know how it went in my house, but it was a tough call. At the end of the day you can get a great education at the undergrad level at many places, including many on the D1 list above and more (you could enroll in the Clark Honors college at Oregon for example), but if the runner is motivated to attend an elite academic institution with small classes, etc., deciding to be a big fish in a smaller pond may be the way to go. Honestly, D3 can be very competitive and challenging for most star HS runners. Maybe not Nico Young level, but for the vast majority of talented runners.

I want to be clear that I'm not trying to disparage Div 1 schools academically. Michigan for instance is an amazing school. But at 45,000 students, and an ave class size of 75+, its a completely different experience than Pomona (1,600 and <20). And that was really the point of my original post. People choose a school like Michigan for completely different reasons than something like John's Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Emory, or Cal-Tech (all Div 3). The same goes for the XCTF programs. There are a lot of Top Tier Div 3 programs like Haverford that have a tremendous culture around running. Different strokes for different folks. The choice should be more about what is the best fit for the student academically AND athletically as opposed to just trying to go D1 to impress people.

Wise Old Man- LOL, I was almost a SCIAC dad, so I can completely relate. And I 100% agree with you on your comments. The D1 vs D3 discussion is common on these threads, and most of the time its people trying to validate their own choices (wether they worked out or not). Most runners, no matter what division they choose, will never go the pro route. So its best to choose the school that offers what the student wants. That could be great academics, great running, great parties, or the most money. Usually its some sort of combination of all of it. A sub 9 HS runner will certainly be challenged at the D3 level. And yes, they will be at the upper tier of runners, but that doesn't mean they will walk in on day one and be the national champion, or even the best on their team. Conversely, if they went the D1 route. they will probably be more challenged and might have better facilities, coaching, or running partners. They will certainly have more opportunities to attend top meets, and possibly gain more notoriety and press. None of which means they will automatically get better, or even make the traveling team their first two years at school. It just depends on a lot of factors. So to answer the original question, I don't think there is a 1 answer fits all approach. As long as your athlete is happy, D1 or D3 is just a number.

You failed at data alalysis. That list of D1 schools is a list that are very good at running and are good academic schools. If you want a list of top academic D1 schools to compare to the list of top D3 academic schools, D1 is absolutely superior as a dataset.

Princeton

Columbia

Harvard

Yale

Stanford

Penn

Duke

Northwestern

Dartmouth

Brown

Vanderbilt

Cornell

Rice

Notre Dame

UCLA

Cal

This dataset educates 150,000 undergraduates. Now list the dataset of D3 schools that educates the top 150,000 students and you will be so far down the list that you will be including students at schools with admission rates of 50% with ACT scores of 25. This comparison is sort of like people comparing D3 running to D1 running because there are a handful of D3 runners who are good enough to run D1.

Karo Syrup wrote:

You failed at data alalysis. That list of D1 schools is a list that are very good at running and are good academic schools. If you want a list of top academic D1 schools to compare to the list of top D3 academic schools, D1 is absolutely superior as a dataset.

Princeton

Columbia

Harvard

Yale

Stanford

Penn

Duke

Northwestern

Dartmouth

Brown

Vanderbilt

Cornell

Rice

Notre Dame

UCLA

Cal

This dataset educates 150,000 undergraduates. Now list the dataset of D3 schools that educates the top 150,000 students and you will be so far down the list that you will be including students at schools with admission rates of 50% with ACT scores of 25. This comparison is sort of like people comparing D3 running to D1 running because there are a handful of D3 runners who are good enough to run D1.

Very good at running? I think you have a lot of schools on this list that would get their butts kicked by the top 2-3 D3 teams at least. You think Brown is beating PP? No chance. The point is a 9 min 3200 runner with great grades and scores is often deciding between schools like Brown, Yale, Penn v PP, Williams, Hopkins. By and large the top D1 running and academic schools are not interested, ie Stanford, Harvard, ND. So that’s the choice. Not an easy one.

Wow some of you struggle with reading. The 1st list was top running schools that are good academically. It was then questioned if some of those schools were as good as the very best D3 schools academically. So a 2nd list was produced of top academic schools, not top running schools. Many do have good teams however.

Uhm- You basically just regurgitated my list and added Notre Dame, UCLA, and Cal to the bottom. And Northwestern does not actually have a true program (Just Woman's XC). I also don't see the relevance of the number of graduates a school produces, vs its prestige. In fact the opposite is usually true.

Again, as Wise Old Man mentioned, you can certainly get a great education at a larger school. Many have created honors programs to try to entice top students away from the Ivies. And different kids thrive in different environments. If you go by standard college rankings of prestige of schools (and yes, I will certainly agree that Forbes, and US News, are VERY subjective) there are more elite D3 schools when it comes to entrance scores, percentage that go to grad school, ave salary at graduation etc. These metrics are subjective of course, but its a matter of whats important to the particular student.

And my original comment was that the Ivies (which compose 8 of your 15) offer absolutely no merit based aid (ie scholarships) so they really aren't a true D1 in that sense. So the number of truly elite (again subjective) D1 schools that offer money is very small for top tier students.

You are incorrect. Kids who run 9 minutes their junior year are nor considering any of those D3 schools. I doubt you can find a D3 kid anywhere who ran 9 flat junior year and probably not even senior year. I am one of those kids and I chose my state school on a full ride. I got a 10% athletic scholarship and had most covered due to being national merit with a 36 ACT. It seemed like the logical choice to not pay $300k to an Ivy and only a few other schools came close to matching the offer I received but there were no real benefits to attending those.

You had impressive metrics and I applaud you. You made a great choice, and as long as you are happy with it, then no one should ever question it. I would argue that the idea that a sub 9 min runner wouldn't choose a D3 school is somewhat outdated. This year the Nescac alone had an 8:57 and a 9:02 runner from HS. I also know of 3 more in that general range that have committed in next years class. I believe Pomona has a few well. Of course 2 or 3 is far from a surge, but D3 is getting more competitive, and I do believe that Patel's 13:50 will certainly fall this year and could even end up in the 13:35 range in the next few years. D3 is getting much more competitive and a viable outlet for top HS runners that value high academics and smaller class sizes. Certainly not for all, and it will never compete with the talent at D1, but it is getting better.

You don't see the relevance? If there are 10 D3 schools at the level of 10 D1 schools that both have ACT scores of 35 and 7% acceptance rates and the D1 schools are 10 times larger, they educate 10 times more students and all 10 D3 schools combined would have the number of applicants as one D1 school and the same number admitted as one D1. The D3 schools are not ranked higher. At best, they are equal but are much smaller and fewer in number.