College tennis and careers after college

[Vegas,ade]

I was wondering if there is any info anywhere on college tennis players and what careers they are in when school is finished. I wonder if they are more successful than kids coming from team sports?

[Chemist]

http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story/...red-real-world

This study shows student athletes may have a more successful career than non-student athletes.

Tennis players may have better GPA than student athletes of other team sports, such as football and basketball. They may be more likely to pursue graduate education that often leads to a better job. In addition, tennis players can make a decent living by teaching tennis when they are in a graduate school or before they find a better job.

[goober]

Originally Posted by Chemist

http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story/...red-real-world

This study shows student athletes may have a more successful career than non-student athletes.

.

That "study" is a bunch of hocus pocus. They claim that atheletes learn and grow faster than non athlete students in critical thinking, self aware-ness, diversity, citizenship, leadership, relations and communication. How do they measure this? They asked them survey questions and the students answer yes or no. Here are some examples right from the study:

I know when someone is using misleading language. For example, I can tell when a TV advertisement has used some ‘weasel words’ to try to confuse or mislead me.

I am able to attach lived experience to emotional/affective response. For example, I can manage the emotional response I experience and accept the comfort and discomfort they bring to me.

I have personal relationships with several people who are ethnically different from me. For example, I have several African-American or European-American friends.

The students answer yes or no to hundreds of these types of questions. You seriously are going to make a broad deduction of student athletes vs nonathletes based on a yes or no survey study? These types of studies are meaningless. It may say that athletes are more confident or have an overinflated opinion of themselves compared to nonathletes but that is about it.

[NLBwell]

It doesn't matter how silly the questions seem as long as the test is verified and validated to correlate to the predicted data.
I have no idea whether that particular test has been proven to predict correctly, however.

[goober]

Originally Posted by NLBwell

It doesn't matter how silly the questions seem as long as the test is verified and validated to correlate to the predicted data.
I have no idea whether that particular test has been proven to predict correctly, however.

how can you validate leadership, self awareness or citizenship? IS this something that can even be measured?

I took a lot of survey studies in high school and honestly most of the time I answered how I thought they wanted me to answer and or to make my self somehow look better even though the test was anonymous.

If someone answer yes to "I know when someone is using misleading language"- how do you know he actually does? He might think he does but he doesn't or he may answer NO and actually has a better understanding then someone who answered yes.

[Gemini]

Several years ago, I was contacted by a company that specifically recruits student-athletes. Part of what the recruiter told me is that student-athletes are used to being team contributors and more often know their "roles" in a team environment while still trying to best individual they can be. They also know how to balance and prioritize responsibilities based the fact that many of them have academics, athletics and lesser work responsibilities compared to non-student athletes. This doesn't take into consideration that some non-student-athletes have jobs outside of school as well and have to juggle that responsibility.

Also, as a student-athlete, I had civic/social responsibilities as well. We had a mandate to volunteer within the community every quarter (citizenship). As for self-awareness and leadership, I would suspect they could talk to coaches and people that have had some direct interaction with that person. Sort like calling a former employer (although you can't ask those kinds of questions in most cases for the average employee).

And there's that desire to win (succeed)....

But I understand the criteria that they assess student-athletes on because it seems similar to the philosophy that some companies have of hiring veterans. There are certain attributes perceived within that group that will make them an overall better gamble to hire.

And to answer the OP's question in not so specific terms, it depends on what their focus happened to be in undergrad. For example, Jeff Laski who played at the University of Illinois (UIUC) is currently in law school as is Kristi Miller (Georgia Tech). Not sure what Jeff's major was in undergrad, but Kristi was a non-engineering (HTS) undergrad major at Tech. Ryan Smith who graduated from GT a few years ago, I think, works for DuPont as a Chemist (Biochemistry undergrad).