Is running in college worth it?

If running is super important to you, yes. It will give your life more purpose and you will have extremely close friends

I'm also an advocate for going to jc (especially if you have to pay your own way). You will get cheap education and coaching and if you improve can possibly get money to run when you transfer

In ancient Greek, virtue and excellence are the same word. If you're good at running, maybe you should keep trying to hone your ability.

College itself isn't worth it if you don't know what to pursue.

mmyskowski wrote:

I'm not super-fast compared to most highschool female runners, but I love everything about xc. I started late too, only in 10th grade when I'd never gone running longer than ten minutes before. I'm currently a senior and my PR is 20:07, I'm hoping to be under 20 by November.

I've been thinking about running in college. I'm obviously nowhere near good enough to run DI lol but do you think it would be worth it to run DIII or possibly DII? I'm not sure what I want to pursue in college. I might go to a community college to save money, but would it be worth it to choose a college with an xc team willing to let me run? What do you guys think?

Yes, it is worth it. And since you just starting running in 10th grade you may be surprised with your improvements over the next couple years with consistent training. You might not be recruited to run DI, but you may be able to walk on to a team. That was the path I chose and I improved enough in college that I ended up be awarded a scholarship after my sophomore year. So don’t rule out DI! No, you might not be able to run at Oregon or Stanford, but you might fit in well at a lower tier DI school!

I run d2 now. It's actually fun and a great break from school.

JUCOs are for idiots. If you aren't smart enough to get discounts at an average D3, you shouldn't waste your time at a JUCO because you are just tgrowing Monet away. Might as well get a job at 18 and you will be further ahead of most at 22. D2 schools are very bad academically also. Get your ACT up and go D3 if you have a real major in mind.

Running in college at the D3 level was one of the best things that I have done in life.

I made life long friends with whom I stay in touch even 25 years after graduation.

I learned how to balance the competing interests of academic life, athletic life and social life - a skill that will serve you well later in life.

I learned that I could actually be pretty good at a sport (I started even later than you, walking on as a freshman in college with no running experience).

I got to travel around the country a bit too, and learned that living in the south might be a better fit for me than staying in the northeast, so it also broadened my horizons some.

Truly a formative experience for me.

There are plenty of programs that would be happy to put you on their roster with your current time. If you don't give it a shot, I suspect that you will regret it later in life. Contrary to what Let's Run might lead you to believe, most college runners are not future Olympians. Find a school that would appeal to you even if you were not going to run, and talk to the coach. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

I was in a similar boat as you and am really happy I ran in college. If you don’t know what you want to do then the best recommendation is a state school, d2 or d3. Go in undeclared or major in something transferable where you could work in a variety of industries, like business or accounting related. Trust me.

mmyskowski wrote:

I'm not super-fast compared to most highschool female runners, but I love everything about xc. I started late too, only in 10th grade when I'd never gone running longer than ten minutes before. I'm currently a senior and my PR is 20:07, I'm hoping to be under 20 by November.

I've been thinking about running in college. I'm obviously nowhere near good enough to run DI lol but do you think it would be worth it to run DIII or possibly DII? I'm not sure what I want to pursue in college. I might go to a community college to save money, but would it be worth it to choose a college with an xc team willing to let me run? What do you guys think?

You are not too slow to run at some of the worse D1 schools, and some D3 schools grab whatever girls they can get so they can have get more guys on the team (balances out the numbers).

How were your track times?

Your education should come first

Going to community college for two years then into a D1 (or D3 I guess) program isn't a bad idea to save some money and still get a good degree. Staying instate should be another option.

Bold - Pick a degree that is worth the cost and time of college, try to figure out what type of work you want to do and understand what jobs you can (or are likely to) get with each degree. You should also take into consideration what grades you expect to get vs what degree. If you chose engineering, there are OK jobs for bad engineers(GPA less than 3). But if you chose chemistry and get a 2.7 GPA your going to end up as a lab tech with not great pay or upward mobility for awhile (as compared to a engineer or chemistry major with a 3.5 who has many more options).

-RS

Smoove wrote:

Running in college at the D3 level was one of the best things that I have done in life....

+1

I didn't really focus on the running part, Smoove hits it on the head here.

mmyskowski wrote:

I'm not super-fast compared to most highschool female runners, but I love everything about xc. I started late too, only in 10th grade when I'd never gone running longer than ten minutes before. I'm currently a senior and my PR is 20:07, I'm hoping to be under 20 by November.

I've been thinking about running in college. I'm obviously nowhere near good enough to run DI lol but do you think it would be worth it to run DIII or possibly DII? I'm not sure what I want to pursue in college. I might go to a community college to save money, but would it be worth it to choose a college with an xc team willing to let me run? What do you guys think?

One I would figure out how good you want to be and why you would want to run in college. If you’re doing it to keep Setting PBs and to keep racing I would 100% go to school and run. If you’re just running to stay fit and race for fun on occasion most schools have clubs and what not that sometimes aren’t half bad.

Here’s the thing with Juco (I just attended one the past two years) they’re great for what they do with education but the running can be very lack luster. With my team the coaches had no clue what to do other than not race us every single week, which most jucos you’ll see do. If you want to go somewhere where you’ll develop and the coach actually cares about his athletes go to Cowley community college. There’s absolutely nothing amazing about the town but man does Coach Cam know what he’s doing. Honestly in juco 20:07 would still get you money. The girls on my team were so bad last year they were running 23 mins and getting 75% deals.

Take a shot and good luck!

Not sure what you mean by "worth it", you have to decide what that means to you. In any case, it is like choosing a major, if you don't like it you can quit.

My advice would be to talk to your current coach about what progress you are likely to make in the next few years. Running in at say a DIII college can be a great experience but it's going to be pretty different it you plateau at 20 minutes than if you continue improving. Running 20 minutes on most DIII teams you'll be depth and won't necessarily be running in the big meets, 19 and you'll largely make the team, 18 you'll be fast a core member even of pretty good DIII teams, 17 you'll be a star, sub-17 and you probably should have gone D1.

I just started my freshman year of college and I have absolutely loved being on the xc team here. It was so incredible to be able to show up at school, not knowing anyone, but within a couple of days have a really big, really strong group of friends in my xc team. We love hanging out and running together. We have our first race of the season and am so excited. I could've taken a gap year to earn money or gone to community college to save some, but the bottom line is that you only get to do college once and if you're in the right place you can have the best years of your life (or so I told and am inclined to believe). Running in college is not as big of a commitment you think it is, and the experience is all worth it. You'll make friends you'll keep for the rest of your life

OP college itself isn't worth it.

These people who went to college 25 years ago would tell you that it was absolutely worth it, even if tuition was $1,000,000 a year.

It's not their life being crippled by college debt.

Find a community college with a track team, or just get a job in a company that has room for advancement.

You could even get a job at a grocery store and become a department manager in a few years, without giving up half your paycheck to student loan payments. Plus you'll get a 4 year head start on your high school classmates that go to college.

If you're going to borrow six figures worth of debt, do it to buy a home, not a piece of paper.

This is the worst advice I have ever read on LR and that’s saying a lot. JCs are a great way to get your basic classes out of the way at an affordable price. Assuming you get good grades it’s much easier to transfer to high demand 4 year colleges than to get in as a frosh. Obviously you need to match the 4 year school with their normal feeder JC and take the proper curriculum. In California, it’s much easier to get into Cal or UCLA as a JC xfer than as a frosh admit. Both of those schools get well over 100,000 applications for about 6k frosh

I was in a very similar situation when I was in HS. I ran 16:53 senior year (about equal to 19:50-20:00 for a girl). Similar to you I loved running but wasn't sure if it was worth it.

I ended up attending the local community college (which didn't have xc/track) and the transferred to the local university (which also didn't have men's xc/track). The school I could have run at would have caused me to graduate with over 100k in student loan debt. Instead, I ended up graduating with 25k in student loan debt and have a good job and should have my loans paid off in the next couple years.

My recommendation: pick a school based off finances and your intended major/career. If they have running great, if they don't they don't. You're much better off with a lot less debt and getting a good major that can get you a good job, even if you miss out on the college running experience. You can still run and train, but it'll just have to be on your own. And you can still register for most college meets (as an unattached athlete) through DirectAthletics.com. Lastly, unless it's an Ivy League, no one cares where you get your degree from. For example, an engineering degree looks just as good from the school that charges 12k/year for tuition as the school that charges 40k/year for tuition.

I'll weigh in with the few (at least there were some!) who suggest that college isn't worth it. I ran in high school, under 3 for the marathon my first year, got gradually better, got to 33-low for 10k. So, running was my main thing really. Not back burner behind partying, etc. but really focused on it, which I believe you have to to get decent mileage in at 15-16. Running for a collegiate team was never considered in my case - and my peers, who of course could be influential to any teen. We didn't see any value in the whole team/bonding/camraderie aspect that so many mention. I get it now, even reading RWTB it comes through. Don't know how much I'd have liked it, but what my training partners and I did know was that running - actually training hard to compete even harder - was very satisfying even without any of the rah-rah school spirit stuff. And I'm still running and competing now, although much older and a little slower!

College, on the other hand, was the worst experience of my life. Many people have been through divorces, disastrous investments, addictions, a few have even killed someone I suppose, but in my case college is the biggest mistake I've ever made. You won't hear a lot of folks saying that, but if I had a time machine......