Cognitive neuroscience or Psychology is a pretty sensible choice for a tennis scholar, lots of stuff you could do around motivation, performance and visual perception etc... Surgery for advanced neuroblatoma is pretty niche! I hope she enjoyed the conference

The paradox is that for those both academically and athletically gifted at some point one just has to be sacrificed if they are to be able to give there best.

It always puzzled me as to why medicine is a post graduate subject in the U.S. Regardless, great to see someone succeed and take maximum value from their tennis scholarship on court and off.

To put things in perspective Vandy sits somewhere between Warwick and Exeter in the TES World Top 100 Universities. Not that the metrics used to compile it are full proof but it is a reasonable guide. It is just such a shame that we don't have a college sporting ethos that would allow a competitive tennis structure the equivalent of one conference, academically our institutions punch well above their weight.

As has been mentioned often on this site the growth of team tennis in the UK to a level that sustains a semi professional set up that adds depth is essential if players like Georgina are to contribute in a broader sense to that growth should they return to the UK or choose not to go because there are better academic opportunities here.

There is an opportunity to link up the tennis resources available in the capital for example to produce a highly competitive ULU team (University of London) with 4 of the worlds top 30 Universities within a few miles of each other which would be fit for purpose as a competitive semi professional side. 

Mark Whitehouse may now have finished doing Maths at Imperial but through the Talented Athlete scholarship scheme was also having a decent stab at the futures tour in his holidays. Maths at imperial is mighty impressive as is a CH < 1000 while a student. In a way it is a slight frustration that georgina has had to go to a relatively isolated academic environment in Tennessee when a richer more challenging one exists here it's just a question of creating an identity and team environment around it that makes it as attractive as the excitement of 4 years in the U.S.

 

-- Edited by Oakland2002 on Wednesday 4th of May 2016 05:59:30 AM

Added Thomas W and Oliver D to P1

There is a lot of tennis played at UK universities under the BUCS banner, many institutions running several teams of both men and women.  However, in most institutions it is something students do just for interest outside of their studies and there is not a great deal of commitment involved.  Teams also usually have to buy their own kit and pay for their own accommodation if they need to travel with the team.  I've no idea how much coaching is usually available.  There is also very little help (if any) given to students to help them fit in their sport and almost zero flexibility built into their studies.  The academic side of the US system is inherently more flexible and most athletic teams have access to an advisor to help them timetable everything.  An example springs to mind of a really promising tennis player who actively chose the UK system over the US for academic reasons (Warwick, I believe).  Georgia Craven tennis-wise was right up there with her peer group and really looked like she could have a good stab at a career.  She also could not have had better grades in GCSE and A levels.  A bit of an Emily Arbuthnot if you like.  She has struggled to fit tennis in around her degree in any meaningful way and whenever she does surface in a UK competition, the results are less than spectacular and certainly a lot less than she had been capable of.  I don't know Georgia personally, so have no idea how happy she has been about the choices she made, but it just illustrates how hard it is to pursue tennis actively alongside university in this country.

Depend what you are looking for , if you looking for academic and even UTR then some division two are as good , compare Bryant Division 1 players with Tiffin University, where I believe Emily Sim is going to, plus two Brits already there and two more Brits joining this Fall 

"The scholarship programme at Imperial has been incredibly helpful. The strength and conditioning sessions have been especially important to assist rehabilitation from injuries as I have had quite a few this year, and keeping on top of this enabled me to get back on court in time for some key competitions. Furthermore the funding allowed me to travel to some tournaments abroad which I wouldnt have been able to compete in otherwise, helping me gain experience and ranking points, so I am really grateful to Sport Imperial for the support!" Mark Whitehouse

There are currently 12 tennis players on the Talented athletic scholarship scheme run by sport England.

The American system is funded indirectly by student athletes playing football and basketball, games dominated by the best athletes invariably from poor backgrounds which draw massive crowds and mega TV deals, the athletes get nothing for providing prime time TV from August through to the end of March madness. ( there are 119 division 1 college football teams and only 253 athletes got drafted this year)

Interestingly the British team for the world university games in 2015 was a 50:50 split UK v US based college players with the U.S. Players attending party colleges SMU (famous for athletic suspensions....... ) Memphis ( famous for re well Elvis) and Florida State ( the Florida NFL farm) vs Imperial (14 Nobel prizes including penicillin) Bath (Ash Atalla of the Office fame, a prime minister of Tanzania, the leader of the communist party in Iran and the MP for Falkirk) and Loughborough (Monty Panesar and BiS). Joking apart Bath and Loughborough are well established centres of sporting excellence and academically strong.

Who knows how TASS tennis scholarships will evolve and I have nothing against players going to the U.S. On tennis scholarships but I feel it is better for indigenous growth of the game to foster academic and athletic collaboration here.

-- Edited by Oakland2002 on Wednesday 4th of May 2016 10:59:06 PM

Agreed, I can see the obvious advantages and would not criticise anyone for taking them indeed I am sure I would do the same, but feel the academic side is overstated and if that is what you are after the quality assurance and utility of a degree from Imperial, Bath or Loughborough puts you in a strong position to enter the UK job market or give the fundamental grounding in an academic career. Having lived and worked in both environments the quality of undergraduate education and undergraduates is very different.

Equity of access impacts significantly on intake (I would be very interested in the number of students enrolled who had the equivalent of free school meals). Virtual all the Ivy League schools are private and expensive their intake contain many well educated children of alumni and they buy in their post graduate intellect ie. very little is self grown. This significantly skews the quality of research output making wealthy institutions appear more productive. Access in the UK is more equitable, we do draw on almost the complete population there are confounding factors (disproportionate number of private school kids 8% of the population translating to 50% of the intake) and you can see the difference in the way some of the most able students think. I apologise this is anecdotal and compares two institutions in the world top 10 (not imperial) in one very specific subject. I am tempted to go on but won't.

I don't know how much debt Mr Whitehouse has accrued but to have a UK undergraduate educational experience an ATP ranking and a Maths degree from Imperial is likely to translate into a pretty good deal. In the balance of probabilities he will stay here and work here. I completely understand the costs involved in tennis and that US scholarships for many are the only way to progress or stay in the game. It is however important to highlight there is another way particularly if the academic side is perceived as being of importance.

An interesting conversation - and I wish you and your son all the best, MaryPoppins471.

I don't think one can say that either GB or the US is superior academically. Both have excellent academic institutions ... and middling ones ... and some that aren't particularly strong at all. Clearly a degree from Imperial or the LSE or any of the other elite academic UK institutions will open doors; so would one from Stanford, Dartmouth or Cornell (to name institutions that this year's cohort plan to attend). And so would, as you say, Oakland, a degree from one of the lower-ranked but very good universities - say Bath in the UK or Iowa in the US (the former being TES 251-300 and the latter TES 201-250). There's also the question of special strengths: it's not my area, but my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong!) is that in terms of sports science, you can't do better than Bath or Loughborough. So if you want to enter those particular fields, those institutions are a good place to begin. There's also the reality that, given the tight academic job market, there are very good people all over the place, and  it is perfectly possible to get an excellent academic grounding at a less strong school, if you want to do it and have the ability. I have met postgrads over the years from various institutions that aren't known as global academic powerhouses, but that had clearly provided a motivated and engaged student with an excellent education. And there's the further complication that what's right for one student may not be right for another: a small, not quite so "prestigious" but nurturing institution with good faculty may wind up offering a far better education and quality of life for someone than a "prestigious" pressured, larger and more impersonal environment. And vice versa for a different kind of personality. A student who isn't particularly academic and doesn't want to spend all his/her time in theory but thrives on a practical course may be ably prepared for a very successful career by an institution which doesn't "rank" highly in the general rankings but is superb in its particular area. Horses for courses and all that.

At the elite level, both sides have issues in terms of access: there are a huge variety of reasons for that, not all of them financial. A friend with whom I studied at a Russell Group university years ago, for example, had been strongly discouraged from applying by their secondary school because people at the school felt that young people from their working class area weren't supposed to attend said institution. Fortunately said friend had the ability to do it alone. In terms of finance, I think that the elite US institutions don't have an access issue (though the second-tier ones do); the elite universities' financial aid guarantees that students admitted will be able to attend, and some of the very strongest even have a no-loans policy. This removes an area where historically the UK had an advantage. My grave concern, not at a sports level but at a more general level, is that UK universities have, to a degree, been caught by surprise by the introduction of such high fees and have not yet (on the whole) been able to put structures in place to offer sufficient funding to overcome the barriers that these pose in some cases. That's a particular problem for academic institutions that are in housing hot spots, as several UK universities are.

I don't know the world of tennis scholarships at all, so don't know what the terms are ... it sounds as if you, MaryPoppins471 are experiencing all that firsthand. But I do sometimes worry that some of the institutions offering scholarships may be of an unknown academic quality. I'm aware that the sheer weight of numbers of US educational institutions mean that there are doubtless many of which people in the UK have never heard that are actually quite good: I've looked up some of the ones people are attending, starting with the TES global rankings - which helpfully lets you search for just UK and US together, providing reference points (though it feels quite biased towards the sciences and larger rather than smaller institutions .. and is slightly dubious in that the UK and US dominate all the top places) and then using the US News rankings and reports, which seems much better at picking up smaller institutions that are good but don't have the resources to match the huge universities. To take one example about which I previously knew nothing at all, Furman looks like quite a good school and pleasant place to be. And there are doubtless many similar instances. But one does hope that people applying both in the UK and in the US are looking carefully, as there may be some where the fit for the student will not be right ... or what's offered will not be what was hoped for ... and the academic training received will not advance people as much as one would hope.

-- Edited by Spectator on Thursday 5th of May 2016 11:30:00 AM

-- Edited by Spectator on Friday 6th of May 2016 11:01:15 AM