On July 24th, Forbes released their list of the top 100 colleges in the United States for 2013. There are dozens of such rankings, and all have different, disputed, methodologies, but make no mistake: Forbes’ list is the most visible and impactful of these lists, and absolutely affects the schools’ attractiveness to potential students.
When looking through this year’s list, which can be seen here, one thing became incredibly obvious: there is an obvious correlation between what these schools do in the pool and what they do in the classroom.
Looking as far as the top 100-ranked academic institutions, we only saw 5 that don’t have any swimming programs: #43 Haverford College, #60 Wake Forest, #65 Reed College (who has no varsity athletics, period), the black-eye #73 Maryland, and #72 the University of Santa Clara, who does offer both men’s and women’s water polo teams.
Think about that. Overall, there’s somewhere around 530 NCAA schools that sponsor swimming and diving, and 95 of them are rated among the top 100 academic institutions in America. Surely, that number would become even more impressive if we trawled further down Forbes’ list. Even more so, these schools support both men’s and women’s teams – aside from Wellesley College, an all-women’s college, Rice is the highest-ranked school with only a women’s program (Illinois and Washington are two other notable examples, and there aren’t many).
It’s not just about participating, though; how about the success in the water combined with the success in the pool.
Both NCAA Division I Championship teams were ranked in the top 100: Michigan at #30, and Georgia (whose women’s swim program has a sterling academic reputation) at #90. Men’s NCAA Division III Champions Kenyon checked in at #69.
The women’s NCAA Division III Champions Emory would have been in the top 100, but it turns out that they were disqualified from the rankings (one of four schools) for falsifying data – basing their numbers on admitted students rather than enrolled students over the last decade.
Congratulations to all of the schools that made the list, and those who are putting in the work to some day make it.
Stanford #1.. Kind of a surprise? UCLA probably would benefit from a coaching or culture change if they really wanted to compete with those elite swim schools in the country or even their own division. I really don’t think that matters to them though. .Coaches has other priorities. Like building versatile well rounded adults. Not just swimmers..Past performance, unfortunately does not indicate “elite” results for this team as a whole, regardless of who gets recruited there. For now anyway.
impressive list …. one nit-pick: they are women’s college. not girls-schools. (I’ve got my diploma from one of them and it’s a pet peeve!)