Surely a college tennis player can take a serious major

danielpreston · Oct 10, 2007

A recent posting implied that the time demands on scholarship tennis players are such that they most often only do "dilute" majors - English, business or sports science.

A "serious" major like Mathematics is uncommon among NCAA tennis players.

Any comments or opinions out there?

goober · Oct 10, 2007

You can take any major you want. There are plenty of D1 athletes in "serious" majors. The perception is that many athletes especially in football and basketball are not academically inclined and can't handle it. But even in those sports there are people who complete engineering, physics and other tough majors.

During the tennis season you may want to take a lighter load that semester.

Chauvalito · Oct 10, 2007

That is what the summer semester is for. Courses given during the summer are quite underutilized by many students. Many have to work, but it is still possible to take at least one course.

Summer courses allowed me to get my B.A. and complete two minors in 4 years.

Many students more than 4 years to complete one B.A.

The sad thing is, If I would have done some more planning during my first 2 years I could have finished with 3 B.A.'s.

When I graduated I was only 3 courses away from finishing a second B.A., but I didnt want to attend for another semester.

Luckily I will be able to finish it while in Grad school.

JRProstaf9 · Oct 10, 2007

If anyone says that you can't take a serious major when your playing college tennis has no idea what they are talking about and highly underestimates the capabilities of anyone focused enough to play at the collegiate level.

From my own expeerience I can atest to the fact that it is possible to play high calibur tennis while maintaining a demanding major such as physical therapy or pre med. Granted the school I went to was not as big as say a stamford or UCLA... but we were listed as one of the top schools in the nation for physical therapy and in recent years one of the best schools in new england for tennis. In my freshman year alone both mens and womens tennis teams boasted a total of 6 PT majors in different stages in their academic careers.

Even bigtime programs like Stanford require students to maintain a high GPA 3.7+ (I believe but anyone please feel free to correct me) in order to maintain eligibility for sports teams... and unlike big money programs like football and basketball, extensive "tutoring" is almost never available for athletes in programs like tennis, golf, etc.

My philosophy is this... if your mentally and physically able to play at a level that lets you comete with some of the best players in a region let alone the country your able to put the same hard work and focus into any major you decide.

danielpreston · Oct 10, 2007

I suppose I'm also asking not what's possible, but what's normal and/or what's expected.

In other words are most NCAA tennis players encouraged or expected to do an easier major. I'm sure there will always be exceptions and exceptional student athletes

chrisplchs · Oct 10, 2007

it's obvious many of yall here have no idea about student athlete majors.

As a student athlete in a big time program myself, I can testify about some trends.

No school requires their student athletes to major a 3.7+ to play sports. If that was the case, then almost no student athletes will qualify. The average GPA at the "smart" schools are around a 3.1 to 3.4 max. For football and bball that number is much lower, especially at D1-A schools.

It is possibly to have "hard" majors and still play sports. I know of a few ATP pros that had majors like "mathematics", "chemistry", "electrical engineering"

Supernatural_Serve · Oct 10, 2007

danielpreston said:
I suppose I'm also asking not what's possible, but what's normal and/or what's expected.

In other words are most NCAA tennis players encouraged or expected to do an easier major. I'm sure there will always be exceptions and exceptional student athletes

It depends on the school and the individual. Its up to the student athlete to own his own academic and tennis "career" in college. Some can do it and some can't.

Chemistry, engineering, whatever, isn't "challenging" everywhere, just like tennis isn't competitive at all colleges. Some schools its insane and one would be hard pressed to pull it off, and others where its a breeze.

tbini87 · Oct 10, 2007

major in whatever you are passionate about, or in what you want to do when you are done with tennis. just know that it will be a lot of work, especially during tennis season. taking a lighter load during season would prob be smart so you don't overwork yourself.

Noveson · Oct 10, 2007

My sister is a D1 athlete, she is in the graduate school for engineering at Oregon state.

ewcrider · Oct 10, 2007

I'm an aerospace engineering major, but i also go to a DIII school, so school is definitely the priority. We practiced (stopped for winter until january) for 2.5 hours a day. I'm sure you can do it at a DI school, depending on the school's academic workload.

bigfoot910 · Oct 11, 2007

I played for a DI school and many of our players got "serious" degrees. They ranged from electrical, mechanical, and petroleum engineering to Pre-Med (me). Of course we had the standard Int. Business and management, but to be honest there were more of the serious majors than not.

snvplayer · Oct 11, 2007

I have always been curious about this as well.

Having majored Computer Engineering in pretty rigorous engineering program, I often questioned if anyone could balance the academics of engineering and sports. I and my friends used to spend endless hours in labs trying to get our projects to work.

I barely had time to play tennis twice a week. When I began to play 2~3 times a week, I began to fall behind my classes and projects. I think a lot of people can attest to this.

I did see one tennis player in mechanical engineering. And I was amazed how she balances her practice and school work.

I have seen the tennis players with Pre-Med major once. I think he gave that up after a year or two. It's not important how many these atheltes have declared "Pre-Med" as their majors, it's how they perform and how many people get into med school.

I am not saying it's impossible. I guess it all depends on how rigorous the program is, how brilliant the student is..But I think a lot of time, one will have be sacrificed for another.

sureshs · Oct 11, 2007

chrisplchs said:
I know of a few ATP pros that had majors like "mathematics", "chemistry", "electrical engineering"

Can you name them?

sureshs · Oct 11, 2007

danielpreston said:
A recent posting implied that the time demands on scholarship tennis players are such that they most often only do "dilute" majors - English, business or sports science.

A "serious" major like Mathematics is uncommon among NCAA tennis players.

Any comments or opinions out there?

Don't worry. You will be fine.

BreakPoint · Oct 11, 2007

junbumkim said:
I have always been curious about this as well.

Having majored Computer Engineering in pretty rigorous engineering program, I often questioned if anyone could balance the academics of engineering and sports. I and my friends used to spend endless hours in labs trying to get our projects to work.

I barely had time to play tennis twice a week. When I began to play 2~3 times a week, I began to fall behind my classes and projects. I think a lot of people can attest to this.

I did see one tennis player in mechanical engineering. And I was amazed how she balances her practice and school work.

I have seen the tennis players with Pre-Med major once. I think he gave that up after a year or two. It's not important how many these atheltes have declared "Pre-Med" as their majors, it's how they perform and how many people get into med school.

I am not saying it's impossible. I guess it all depends on how rigorous the program is, how brilliant the student is..But I think a lot of time, one will have be sacrificed for another.

I gave up on playing college tennis my freshman year at an Ivy university because I realized that my mechanical engineering coursework would be way too intense and time consuming for me to include taking time out to play tennis. :-(

LuckyR · Oct 11, 2007

If you are playing college tennis in the modern era, you are unlikely to make the majority of your lifetime's earnings from playing Pro tennis, so you'd better plan accordingly...

Doc Hollidae · Oct 11, 2007

danielpreston said:
A recent posting implied that the time demands on scholarship tennis players are such that they most often only do "dilute" majors - English, business or sports science.

A "serious" major like Mathematics is uncommon among NCAA tennis players.

Any comments or opinions out there?

You left out Communications. That's like the #1 major of college athletes'.

Fee · Oct 11, 2007

I just spoke to a recent USC grad/tennis player. He majored in Economics/Business, graduated in five years with some time off for an injury. The business part of that major may have been 'easy' but I'm sure the economics kept him up a few late nights here and there (but then again, he went to USC so how hard could it have been....

).

LuckyR · Oct 11, 2007

Fee said:
I just spoke to a recent USC grad/tennis player. He majored in Economics/Business, graduated in five years with some time off for an injury. The business part of that major may have been 'easy' but I'm sure the economics kept him up a few late nights here and there (but then again, he went to USC so how hard could it have been.... ).

Hahahaha....

+1

goober · Oct 12, 2007

Fee said:
I just spoke to a recent USC grad/tennis player. He majored in Economics/Business, graduated in five years with some time off for an injury. The business part of that major may have been 'easy' but I'm sure the economics kept him up a few late nights here and there (but then again, he went to USC so how hard could it have been.... ).

Well apparently SC has improved their academics a lot recently. Their incoming freshman GPA and SAT are supposedly getting close to UCLA according to my SC friends.

Still probably the Univeristy of Spolied Children thoguh. And remember it's just SC ... lol

raiden031 · Oct 12, 2007

I don't understand how they can take a serious major simply due to class scheduling. What happens if required classes occur right smack in the middle of practice? I have heard that some players of sports are only allowed to take day time classes, but I majored in Comp Eng., and I know there were plenty of upper level classes that were only offered in the evenings or late afternoons. Anyone know how this situation is typically handled?

counterpunchingrules · Oct 12, 2007

danielpreston said:
A recent posting implied that the time demands on scholarship tennis players are such that they most often only do "dilute" majors - English, business or sports science.

A "serious" major like Mathematics is uncommon among NCAA tennis players.

Any comments or opinions out there?

im a college player - my major is mathematics

chrisplchs · Oct 12, 2007

raiden,

it depends on the school. Some teams hold practice only in the morning (7:30-11:00) while others hold it int he after noon (3:00 - 7:00)

Almost any major is possible for college athlete. Also, in the "off" season it is a common practice for coaches to let their athletes skip practice to take mandatory classes that are offered only at a certain time

danielpreston · Oct 13, 2007

counterpunchingrules said:
im a college player - my major is mathematics

Hey tell me more counterpuncher!

Which college are you at? Why did you choose it? What's the work load like?

anchorsteamer · Oct 13, 2007

Tennis does take a lot of time...but considering all the help they offer athletes any major is possible. What was tough for me was all the classes missed...yeah you are excused from class with a deans note but sometimes missing 3-4 straight Fridays plus a few full weeks killed me. That being said, planning ahead is what really matters getting fridays off due to travel, and not taking all your toughest classes together...that being said its no different then having a job and taking a tough major (should be noted: I went the relatively easy route of Philosophy...you could miss classes pretty easily and still be alright as long you read the material)

edberg505 · Oct 14, 2007

Sure it is possible. I had a double major in Chemistry and Biology while playing the #1 position for my college tennis team. Just like anchorsteamer said it's the classes being missed that do the damage. When I played we had a lot of Tues. and Thurs. matches. I didn't have that many classes on those days. At most, I had 2 classes on those days. Basically I would get the tennis schedule and plan my courses accordingly. Also the matches that did a lot of damage were the conference tournaments, mainly because those happend towards the end of the season where things start getting hectic and they usually take place for the whole week.

Commando Tennis Shorts · Oct 14, 2007

I have a fundamental problem with this thread. . .

I do not consider English a "diluted major". Try majoring in English and you'll see in a hurry just how serious it is. It is definitely one of the most difficult majors, and I should know.

BreakPoint · Oct 14, 2007

Commando Tennis Shorts said:
I have a fundamental problem with this thread. . .

I do not consider English a "diluted major". Try majoring in English and you'll see in a hurry just how serious it is. It is definitely one of the most difficult majors, and I should know.

But how do you know? Have you also majored in Electrical, Mechanical or Chemical Engineering so that you can compare how difficult they are compared to English? If not, then I don't think you're in a position to judge, are you?

How do I know that English is not as tough as Engineering? Because all the English majors that I knew in college got drunk and partied every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, hardly ever went to class, never studied, and had time to take on part-time jobs, and still got good grades. All the while I spent almost all of my waking hours studying Thermodynamic, Partial Differential Equations, Vibration Theory, Fluid Dynamics, Heat Transfer, and all the other Mechanical Engineering coursework, either in the library or in my room. When I got to graduate business school, everyone said the same thing about their undergraduate colleges, that the English majors partied all the time while the Engineering majors did nothing but study all the time.

Commando Tennis Shorts · Oct 14, 2007

BreakPoint said:
But how do you know? Have you also majored in Electrical, Mechanical or Chemical Engineering so that you can compare how difficult they are compared to English? If not, then I don't think you're in a position to judge, are you?

How do I know that English is not as tough as Engineering? Because all the English majors that I knew in college got drunk and partied every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, hardly ever went to class, never studied, and had time to take on part-time jobs, and still got good grades. All the while I spent almost all of my waking hours studying Thermodynamic, Partial Differential Equations, Vibration Theory, Fluid Dynamics, Heat Transfer, and all the other Mechanical Engineering coursework, either in the library or in my room. When I got to graduate business school, everyone said the same thing about their undergraduate colleges, that the English majors partied all the time while the Engineering majors did nothing but study all the time.

I see your point, as I have not majored in all of those areas, but. . .

Each major has its own serious people and not serious people. Just because you knew English majors who partied all the time and didn't study doesn't mean most English majors are like that.

Although I can not speak for all majors and "serious" majors, I can speak to the experience and difficulty of English, journalism and mathmatics, as I have extensive study and experience in each. Personally, I think writing a 3,500 word essay/critique/narrative/analysis every couple of weeks is much more difficult than studying algorithms and working out APRs. I think pounding out multiple-sourced news stories every day is more difficult than cramming for a Calc. final.

Since we can just use the hearsay of random people we knew in college, I knew tons of English and journalism majors who had literally no free time, while I knew a lot of people in "serious majors" such as architecture and regional development who kept asking my journalism colleagues and I why we didn't have much time to party with them.

This is just my experience. It's probably different for different people, but I just don't understand the grounds for calling English-like majors not "serious".

BreakPoint · Oct 15, 2007

Commando Tennis Shorts said:
This is just my experience. It's probably different for different people, but I just don't understand the grounds for calling English-like majors not "serious".

Well, I think it might be because Engineering majors, like myself, would take some English courses as our "gut" courses whenever we had the chance to take an elective (not many chances) so that we had one "easy" class amongst all of our other "tough, serious, and mind-numbingly complex" classes with lots of equations and intergrals.

I've always felt I could B.S. my way through writing a paper (and I often did) but could never B.S. my way through solving a complex math problem because when writing a paper, there's not just one "right" answer, whereas with most math problems there's usually only one right answer. So in Engineering, you're either right or you're wrong, while in English you can B.S. your way to being "right". At least that's how I viewed it and that's what I did, very successfully, I might add.

Commando Tennis Shorts · Oct 15, 2007

BreakPoint said:
Well, I think it might be because Engineering majors, like myself, would take some English courses as our "gut" courses whenever we had the chance to take an elective (not many chances) so that we had one "easy" class amongst all of our other "tough, serious, and mind-numbingly complex" classes with lots of equations and intergrals.

I've always felt I could B.S. my way through writing a paper (and I often did) but could never B.S. my way through solving a complex math problem because when writing a paper, there's not just one "right" answer, whereas with most math problems there's usually only one right answer. So in Engineering, you're either right or you're wrong, while in English you can B.S. your way to being "right". At least that's how I viewed it and that's what I did, very successfully, I might add.

I do see your point, and I will concede that engineering courses are in a class way above other courses and majors in terms of difficulty---but I'll only concede that about engineering specifically

chrisplchs · Oct 15, 2007

English majors are different from Engineering are different from Political Science. The funny thing is that English major are more likely to make bigger bucks than Engineering majors but Engineering majors have a higher starting out salary.. think Law School.

It all depends on where you go to school. At some schools.. english majors are probably harder than engineering majors.. I can think of two very prominent schools where that is the case because of the lack of luster in its engineering programs and the absurd strength of their english departments. However, for any engineering schools worth a salt, I would have to say, Engineering majors is more time consuming than english majors.

As for what I think is the hardest department/school, nothing can beat the Econ track at UChicago. Quarter system kick serious ass, more so for non science majors

Also, I took "english" courses as my easy class but I didn't take it because it was part of the english department but because the professor made the class a joke.

Commando Tennis Shorts · Oct 16, 2007

Of course the elective English classes are going to be a joke. It's the "real" English classes (you know, the ones you can only get into by being an English or English-related major) that I am using to measure this conversation. And as far as being able to BS through English classes goes, you may be able to get away with that in Eng 103, 222, etc, but when that's your major and all your English classes are 300, 400 and above, if you BS a paper, you're going to be walking away with an "E"----and believe me, you'll start taking English pretty damn seriously

Surely a college tennis player can take a serious major

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