Life

Best Predictor of Academic Excellence

Go figure. A research at the University of Washington has determined that Ultimate Frisbee is one of the best predictors for academic excellence.

What is this sport that mysteriously divines a university’s stature so precisely? It’s called Ultimate Frisbee, or more commonly just Ultimate. It is the fastest growing college sport and is already played interscholastically at over 500 colleges and universities. While wildly popular on campuses, relatively few in the wider world have even heard of it.

My favorite quote is

Why a game, requiring such all-around athleticism should so consistently be dominated by universities (and presumably students) with off-the-chart academic credentials, is truly a mystery. The top seven schools for ultimate have a mean graduation rate of 95% and nearly as many total Rhodes and Marshal scholars as all of the rest combined. The names speak for themselves: Stanford, Brown, Harvard, Tufts, Dartmouth, Yale, and Princeton.

Where’s MIT? Hey, wait! OK, it’s true, while we had fun playing there, I can’t say we really excelled at a national level, not at least for the men.