NYU has 29,401 undergraduates...
And 29,743 graduate and professionals students, including this one guy who is pretty good at swimming.
Rowan vs NYU
Oct 28, 2023 Palladium Athletic Center - New York, NY1
Did you know that NYU is the largest private university in the United States, and by far the largest competitor in Division III swimming.
NYU has three times more faculty than Kenyon has students.
They have 29,401 undergraduates.
Undergraduates are less than half of NYU’s student population, as their graduate and professional schools enroll 29,743 students.
That whole graduate/professional school thing at NYU didn’t seem like a factor before. And maybe it isn’t, except for one guy.
Last season, 11 schools finished in SwimCloud’s end of the year top 10 ranking. Nine of those schools finished top 10 for both Men and Women. In alphabetical order:
Chicago
Denison
Emory
Johns Hopkins
Kenyon
MIT
NYU
Tufts
Williams
WashU finished top 10 for Men, and Pomona-Pitzer finished top 10 for Women.
The comparison of undergraduate populations looks like this:
I understand that swim teams are not assembled through random selection from the existing student-body, and that relative student population in college does not matter for athletic success like it does in high school. But holy cow. Look at that.
Anyway, back to graduate students. Last year was a season when graduate students made a significant impact. Several of the top swimmers in the division were graduate students - Taylor Leone, Jason Hamilton, Justin Lum…and that’s just Emory.
This year presents a different scenario. Emory's roster doesn't include any graduate students, and Denison doesn't have any fifth-year swimmers. While there are approximately 10 graduate students on the rosters of top D3 teams, only Peter LaBarge (Tufts) and Edenna Chen (MIT) made A-finals at 2023 Nationals. Those two athletes will no doubt go to Nationals and make a difference for their teams.
Yet, when we consider the influence of graduate students on Division III this season, it is hard to shake the sense that we are talking about one guy - Derek Maas. And that’s partly because it is so hard to know what to expect. On the one hand, he was a dominant swimmer in the SEC, and his best times rival the previously unbeatable records set by Andrew Wilson. On the other hand, he is now training in New York City while managing the demands of medical school.
So much uncertainty, but this weekend Rowan (always competitive) rolls into town, so maybe some of that uncertainty starts clearing-up.
Palladium Athletic Facility.
It’s near the Trader Joe’s. No, not the one near Stuyvesant, one the near Union Square. […] Yeh, there’s a Trader Joe’s there. […] Look, say you are standing in front of Forbidden Planet. […] Of course, I mean the new location. Why would I give you directions from the place Forbidden Planet used to be 30 years ago? […] Oh, OK, I get it. You are the real New Yorker, you’ve been here since the days of Ed Koch. I bow my head. Can we move on? […] Walk up Broadway towards Union Square, take a right on 14th, walk past the Nordstrom Rack, past Zeckendorf (I know, tell me about it), and the pool is on that block, on your right. […] Yeh, that Trader Joe’s.