re: Harvard vs. LSU--football--financially

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See if you can get a football scholarship to Stanford. You get a Div. 1 football experience along with one of the greatest educations in the world.

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There are only 6-7 schools in the country that fit this bill.

Stanford
Notre Dame
Northwestern
UVA
Duke
Cal
UCLA

That's a quick list off the top of my head. D1 athletics + top tier academics are very difficult to find. Stanford is truly in a league of its own and the others I listed are the tier below.

Harvard Harvard Harvard.

Now, if they are the #1 recruit in the country, it really just doesn't matter where they go, they're never working a "real" job.

A few years ago, A friend of my family had a kid in the same boat. He was a DB that was being recruited by Alabama, but had offers from Vanderbilt and Stanford (this was pre-Stanford being good), as well as the opportunity to play at Ivies.

He chose to go to Alabama and never saw the field except on special teams as a senior. He's doing well for himself in Birmingham as a financial advisor and has parlayed his time playing for Dubose and Shula into a lucrative career.

If this kid wants to stay in Louisiana, he's probably just as well or better being the backup at LSU as playing at Harvard. If he wants to be on Wall Street, he needs to go to Harvard.

FYI. Harvards running back for the last four season was from New Orleans and played for Jesuit. I think Paul Stanton Jr is his name. I believe is father is an engineer with Entergy.

quote:

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If this kid wants to stay in Louisiana, he's probably just as well or better being the backup at LSU as playing at Harvard. If he wants to be on Wall Street, he needs to go to Harvard.

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I said the same thing in the other thread and people thought is was so hilarious that is was sig-worthy and pitied my lack of understanding of the "real world".

There simply aren't very many jobs in Louisiana where a Harvard applicant would have an advantage. If an employer believes that two candidates are equally able to perform the duties, and one was an LSU football player, that guy is getting the job. Almost every high-paying job requires at least some client/customer/outside interaction, and in Louisiana there is real value to having a guy who can tell stories about his time playing football for LSU.

As I said in the other thread, the Harvard resume will end up at the top of the resume stack, but the football player's resume was never on a stack to begin with because that hiring decision was made over lunch or drinks with someone from the C-suite.

As I see it, the biggest advantages of an Ivy education as far as job opportunities are: (1) it is a signal that you are at minimum very intelligent and (2) it provides access to incredible alumni networks. In Louisiana there just aren't many job openings where the required intelligence is such that you are only looking at Ivy-caliber candidates, and the alumni networks just don't have much of a presence.

In NYC, LSU is closer to a BRCC than to a Wharton. But that is a completely different discussion.

To clarify, I'm talking about undergrad degrees only. A JD or MBA is a different story, though I still think those difference are not as extreme in Louisiana as in other places.

And when I say equal candidates, what I mean is literally the same exact human being who in one universe played football at LSU and in an alternative universe went to Harvard. Anyone who is smart enough to get into Harvard and has access to the resources that LSU provides to its players should at minimum end up with some strong academic accolades and has a decent chance of being recognized throughout the state as some kind of genius.

I'm certainly not arguing that all LSU football players would get any job over any Harvard graduate. My thoughts are mainly based on seeing that the guys I know that went to an Ivy undergrad for sports and moved back to Texas (football at Yale, lacrosse at Dartmouth and Princeton) have decent jobs but it didn't seem like it was significantly easier for them to find employment, whereas I know of quite a few former athletes who have been able to get jobs well above where they would be without athletics.

If I had college to do over again, I would've definitely gone to Harvard. Not sure why I didn't. Probably should've played football at LSU too though. Who knows...