24% of High School Student Athletes Want to be Engineers, Scientists

http://howto.berecruited.com/student-athletes-what-where-and-who-infograph

by vsprabhakara1 • 14 years ago

49 34 14 years ago

howto.berecruited.com

dmoy2• 14 years ago

Keep in mind that ~35% of ALL students want to be engineers or scientists (as of 2006: http://www.heri.ucla.edu/nih/downloads/2010%20-%20Hurtado,%2...).

Also 60% of them drop out (or switch) within 5 years.

vsprabhakara16• 14 years ago

That's great background information. I wonder what the primary driver of switching out is

onryo• 14 years ago

Calculus II is my guess.

dxbydt• 14 years ago

Two of my classmates dropped out of a math graduate program. One of them actually quit right in the middle of class, saying "This is not fun anymore!". It was a Group Theory class on Galois Fields. She became a real estate agent. The other flunked his qualifiers & decided to quit the program and become a pilot (!!) instead of retaking the exams.My prof said attrition rates in math were super high.Its just not everybody's cup of tea, I guess. Among undergrads, sometimes people switch because profs demean you. Once when I was a TA, the Algorithms prof wrote an email calling a student "bozo" because he couldn't figure out shell sort ( its a stable sort algo ). Unfortunately the student was cc'ed in the email & took it badly & switched.

dmoy2• 14 years ago

There were some earlier news articles & spinoff discussions in the recent past (NYTimes, etc).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-scien...

Wish I had the link to discussions about it, they were better than the actual article.

drcube• 14 years ago

I can't tell if this is supposed to be surprisingly high or surprisingly low.

Either way, it is worth pointing out (perhaps to the choir) that the stereotypes of dumb jocks and fat nerds are not realistic, if they ever were. Strong minds correlate with strong bodies.

Which reminds me, I need to get back in my routine, and go out there and run today after work. :)

yummyfajitas2• 14 years ago

...it is worth pointing out (perhaps to the choir) that the stereotypes of dumb jocks and fat nerds are not realistic...

Within a given college, it is likely to be realistic. Take U-Mich, for example (since they are the only school to reveal their point system) - being a student athlete is worth +1.0 on GPA. I.e., a student athlete with a 2.5 is on equal footing with a non-athlete having a 3.5. This means that the intellectual average of student athletes is highly likely to be lower than the average of non-athletes.

http://www.cir-usa.org/Images/mich_index.gif

vsprabhakara16• 14 years ago

"This means that the intellectual average of student athletes is highly likely to be lower than the average of non-athletes"

This applies to Michigan specifically. They are willing to make academic sacrifices for the sake of their athletic programs and (maybe) a well-rounded student body. Not all schools operate this way.

baddspellar• 14 years ago

I looked at the form. It doesn't say "student-athlete". it says "scholarship athlete". Athletic scholarships overwhelmingly go to Football players who are heavily recruited because football is revenue generating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_I_(NCAA)#Scholarship_l...

Jach• 14 years ago

I wanted to be a billionaire during high school (I still wouldn't mind it but it's not a driving goal). Wanting and becoming and doing are very different things. How many engineers and scientists were high school athletes? I'd be interested in that percentage.

vsprabhakara16• 14 years ago

Its a bit more than a "want". They are telling this to colleges that offer that major, are taking the necessary coursework, etc.

To your question: I'll have beRecruited revisit in a few years when we have more students graduating college than still in it.

kleiba• 14 years ago

Note: "to be", not "to become".

robk• 14 years ago

Sadly this seems unrealistic given the constraints placed on student athletes and the time consuming nature of engineering studies. It's really hard to find blocks of time to work on CS projects when you're spending 6+ hours a day outside of classes training for any given sport.

anonymoushn• 14 years ago

My impression at a state university in the US was that CS was one of the least demanding majors in terms of time spent on coursework outside of class. Sadly I do not have any data about this.

LearnYouALisp• 14 years ago

Perhaps that is due to the curriculum at that particular university.

dexy• 14 years ago

CS was likely the most demanding major at my university in terms of workload outside of class. Depended on what classes you took, but the toughest demanded ~30hrs per week of problem sets + coding assignments each. Made being a D1 athlete in a top national program very tough to pull off.

asianexpress• 14 years ago

I was a CS major / D1 athlete and I'd have to say it's not entirely unrealistic -- while there is the dumb jock stereotype, a lot of college athletes have a pretty good work ethic due to a good training ethic. Though some end up with just a party ethic

Just before my senior year, I was able to help co-found a startup as well (which is now 4 years running), while competing at a national level

But yes, there were only 4 or 5 engineers among ~50 guys. I think it's more that a lot of the people who lean towards engineering in high school are usually not the athletic type -- though I suppose this article is more about the athletic types interested in engineering

vsprabhakara16• 14 years ago

That's awesome to hear. Would love to hear more about your experiences. We hear from student athletes all the time asking for advice on how to manage school and sport. Drop me a line at vish AT berecruited DOT com.

gt384u2• 14 years ago

Based on my (perhaps limited) understanding of where they get their data set, isn't it possible that the percentage of athletes interested in engineering be overrepresented by the source? I would imagine an online social network for recruiting student athletes would be just sort of thing that would skew towards people who had computer access and savvy?

Wouldn't someone like the NCAA be a better place to derive this sort of representative data as far as what incoming high school students are interested in majoring in? Presuming of course that the NCAA was the only game in town as far as collegiate athletics was concerned (is it?).

vsprabhakara16• 14 years ago

While there might be a slight amount of skewing due to the fact that we're an online service, we have a very large data set relative to the population we're speaking about. Also, given the process of college admissions today, its fair to say that most people applying to college have access to a computer.

In addition, there is more than the NCAA, such as the NAIA and Junior Colleges. We take all that into account.

gt384u2• 14 years ago

Interesting. If I were interested in the current recruiting landscape for high school athletes, do you happen to know of any good survey or review-type sources? I'm curious about the context surrounding your company's service.

namank• 14 years ago

Why is this surprising at all?

coderdude• 14 years ago

In first grade I'm sure that 90% of students want to be doctors and firemen. I'd be willing to bet this is the almost-grown-up version of that.

candre717• 14 years ago

There seems to be an undercurrent of resistance against student athletes, when keep in mind that even engineering schools have athletic programs. They are generally D3, but the athletes in these programs face a relatively demanding schedule. And, from my experience, these slots are usually not walk-ons in the pure sense of the term, so the students coming in are noticed during high school for their athletic abilities. I'd hesitate to say 'recruited,' because D3 - and D2 - recruitment is not the same as D1 and I think D1 is the model people conjure.

Maybe we (as in the scientific and math-inclined) like to feel special, because 'we solve hard problems.' Maybe we were always picked last, while we watched the more athletic and popular lead. And they took our lunch money. Whatever the case, rather than trying to minimize athletes, we should try to support and encourage each other, athletic or not.

lergix• 14 years ago

I'll informally confirm the 60% drop out statistic.

When I first started college (engineering focused school) the dean of undergrad academics had us all stand in a line and did the "look left and look right" thing - chances are that out of the 3 (yourself included), 2 of you will not make it to graduation. I thought he was joking until i got to my 4th-5th semester and a lot of folks i knew were either transferring out or switching to business type majors.

Education in engineering is a lesson in self discipline.

24% of High School Student Athletes Want to be Engineers, Scientists

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