24% of High School Student Athletes Want to be Engineers, Scientists | Hacker News Reader

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

howto.berecruited.com

49 pointsvsprabhakara134 comments

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.

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

Calculus II is my guess.

I think it's the lack of basic algebra mastery in high school that makes college math so frustrating.

I'm 100% with you on that one. That was my biggest stumbling block in college, simply remembering basic algebra. The online resources were more effectual than my professors on teaching a subject.

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.

wait, shell sort is stable?

No, it is unstable. The striding means that two equal elements can easily be reordered. For example, after 2-sorting [(2,a), (1,b), (1,c)] by the first component you get [(1,c), (1,b), (2,a)].

Galois Fields was when I realized I just didn't want to be a mathematician. I like math, but you can only be a professional mathematician (as opposed to a numerical modeller or some other applied mathematician) if you tackle the stuff that's so hard no other mathematician in the world can do it, or esoteric enough that only a few other mathematicians have bothered trying.

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.

Here you go:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3196377

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3239815

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?).

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.

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.

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking for. Feel free to email me at vish AT berecruited DOT com with more details

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. :)

...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

"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.

Many schools do it. Michigan is the only one who's point system was made public. But you are right, there are some who don't do this.

Even so, the rubric only shows that Michigan is willing to overlook academic shortcomings in their efforts to recruit athletic talent. Academic and athletic talent still might be correlated in the general population, while sampling bias from the university admissions process over-represents dumb jocks and under-represents dumb non-jocks.

For example, suppose the academic ability of jocks is normally distributed about 105 with a std dev of 15, whereas non-jocks are normally distributed about 100 with the same std dev. If the cutoff for admission is 110, but athletic talent gives you a 20 point bonus, then you're your comparing mean aptitude in a sample of non-jocks, given that every observation is >= 110, to the mean aptitude in a sample of jocks, given that every observation is >= 90. Under those conditions, you'll find a 10 point difference in favor of your sample of non-jocks, even though the population mean for jocks is higher.

I think you alluded to this point in an earlier reply, but it's worth spelling out.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Why is this surprising at all?

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

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