How much does being a D3 athlete really help..

Considering a top Nescac -non helmet sport- and part of coach’s sell is that his athletes wind up at top firms. Basically that the mgmt on the street loves bringing in guys that played their sport/alma mater and it’s a
distinct and significant advantage. Can see this for the top 2 Nescac, but is this a pretty typical leg up?

 
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Huge leg up in my opinion (from personal experience). If anything, it's a great talking point during any sort of networking. In the end of the day, Wall Street BBs have resumes hundreds, if not thousands, of 3.7+ finance majors with somewhat relevant finance internship experience when they are looking to fill analyst classes. Anything that makes you stand out (i.e. sports) could be the difference between getting that phone call and getting your resume passed.

Also, whats the alternative? Going to a non-target D1 school to play sports? Or simply deciding whether or not it's worth it to play D3? Just my two cents, but employers care more that you put 25+ hours into a sport every week and got a good GPA, not about how good you actually are. Being a college athlete teaches you discipline, mental toughness, long term goal-setting, teamwork, etc.. that other students don't quite have the opportunity to learn. So with that being said, at a top LAC in the NESAC (Amherst or Williams I'm guessing), you'll have a huge leg up recruiting. Take the opportunity and run with it in my opinion. Being on a college sport isn't something that everyone has the opportunity to do, so put your soul into it and enjoy the hell out of the next 4 years. You'll make memories of a lifetime with your teammates and come out a better person because of it.

 

Absolutely - put a full section under “Leadership and involvement” or something like that. Make it clear that it’s D3/Varsity level (and not just a club sport). Line items: describe your weekly commitment, describe a specific accomplishment, say “earned a spot on the team” or something along those lines. It’s defienitly something you want to stick out to someone reading your resume.

 
ib123456789:
Huge leg up in my opinion (from personal experience). If anything, it's a great talking point during any sort of networking. In the end of the day, Wall Street BBs have resumes hundreds, if not thousands, of 3.7+ finance majors with somewhat relevant finance internship experience when they are looking to fill analyst classes. Anything that makes you stand out (i.e. sports) could be the difference between getting that phone call and getting your resume passed.

Also, whats the alternative? Going to a non-target D1 school to play sports? Or simply deciding whether or not it's worth it to play D3? Just my two cents, but employers care more that you put 25+ hours into a sport every week and got a good GPA, not about how good you actually are. Being a college athlete teaches you discipline, mental toughness, long term goal-setting, teamwork, etc.. that other students don't quite have the opportunity to learn. So with that being said, at a top LAC in the NESAC (Amherst or Williams I'm guessing), you'll have a huge leg up recruiting. Take the opportunity and run with it in my opinion. Being on a college sport isn't something that everyone has the opportunity to do, so put your soul into it and enjoy the hell out of the next 4 years. You'll make memories of a lifetime with your teammates and come out a better person because of it.

Fully agree. The one caveat is that it's hard to play a varsity sport, have an active social life, go through recruiting and maintain a great GPA. Getting a 3.5+ is still critical as an athlete.

If you let your academics suffer, it can suddenly become a lot more challenging. Had friends at Amherst/Williams who were varsity athletes who got completely shut out for front office OCR because their grades slipped (think 3.1 - 3.3 GPA)

 

I played varsity soccer for a year before I decided to quit (everything about the program was bullshit, I wen't to an international european school and saw players who wen't to play for top european academies, and thus wasn't too happy with the garbage "merica" type assclown coaching I got) and I don't really agree with you.

You get interviews at firms because athletes are rare, and it's something that's cool. However, don't go around parading this shit about how it teaches you discipline, or teamwork, or some other nebulous term though. The kid who worked his way through college, coming from a poor family, will have way more of that than some upper middle class garbage twat lax fag at UVA (I met too many).

Now if you actually are a gold medalist water polo champion or top snowboarder that's something different, you actually worked for something, and your the best in the world at it, but if your some over priveledged laxbro fuckwit than that's not the case.

In general though most athletes are good dudes, and It will likely give you a + during recruiting, especially if your playing squash, tennis, waterpolo, or some other sport played by only those with means.

 

I mean perhaps not at your program, but I am sure that the majority (over 50%) of athletes on this forum will say it did teach them time-management, discipline, and camaraderie, which is what you also learn in IB.

Yes obviously someone working their way through college, coming from a poor family, will definitely stand out. That will also teach you many of the skills. The question was generally going through school versus also participating in a varsity sport. Even if it is lacrosse or you're a bench-warmer on the basketball team, it's still a significant time commitment on top of school. You still spend time going to practices and games. You don't have to be world-class

“If you ain’t first, you’re last!” - GOAT
 

Sorry you didn't have a great experience with you soccer program. However, I'm going to have to completely disagree with you. Being on a serious athletic program for all 4 years during college takes a crazy amount of work and time commitment. Learning how to truly work with a team every day for four years instead of bullshitting a group project for a business class in the last week of the semester is night and day in terms of the experience you gain. There's a reason investment banking is full of athletes: they know how to work hard, they know how to put up with bullshit rules, and, when times get tough, they put their heads down, go to work and don't complain. Beyond this, going through recruiting for IB roles on top of being in season for a sport is even more difficult.

 

If there are alumni from your school/sport, that's helpful because they will vouch for you. You have an automatic network built in and probably a higher response/helpfulness rate.

Even not being at a top NESCAC school D3 is still a big time commitment. It's not viewed in the same light as D1 football or basketball, but focus on the time management and soft skills, know how to sell it, and being an athlete in any program will help you.

As the other comment asked, what is your alternative? If you're deciding between a target school and the D3 sports school, go to the target. If your schools are all similar and you're deciding whether or not to continue playing, the sports angle is a big leg up.

Array
 

I think it's helpful a bit for jobs, but also exaggerated. Certainly an alum from the school who played the same sport will want to meet you. But how many of those are there in the field you want, and how much of a leg up will they give you? Coffee doesn't equal a job and coaches will say anything. D-3 coaches want to win as badly as anyone else.

There is of course an easy way to find out the truth, check out the rosters from the past few years and see where those guys wound up.

On a separate note, I did D-3 tennis and it was useful in other ways I didn't expect. Something about that schedule worked well for me mentally in a way that I couldn't recreate on my own. Right mix of class/exercise/socializing/competing. Left me with enough time to get my work done but not enough time to overthink or stress about life. Made me a more stable person and don't under-estimate the correlation between a happy day-to-day life and succeeding in school/jobs. Talk to other athletes at the school (especially career driven ones) and see if there may be other things they like about the setup. There's probably more in play than just the direct job connections.

 

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