Jasmine Jenkins

UWRT 1104

Ms. White

October 12th 2018

Research Proposal

The research question I have chosen to explore is to what extent does playing a collegiate

sport affect the academic success of a student-athlete? I decided on this question because there is

a preconceived connotation that student-athletes do worse in school or that they choose “easy”

majors. There is also a false accusation that they may receive extra help or benefits from

professors in order to keep them eligible to play. This is untrue and student-athletes tend to have

better GPAs than regular students, take a wide variety of majors ranging from many levels of

difficulty, and do not receive any academic benefits.. I hope to prove these points by researching

and finding statics to aid my proposition and defy the stereotypical opinion of student-athletes.

The directions of inquiry this research topic may take is which sports may be included in

this stereotype, or the different work loads of different sports. This inquiry may lead into why

student athletes may take harder or easier majors. Also, the correlation between the schedules of

student athletes and their academic schedules may arise. This inquiry will involve the

organization and time management aspects. The keywords I will use in my research include,

student athletes, college academics, success, organization, time management, and collegiate

athletics. As stated earlier, the preconceptions are that people do there work for them or that

professors give them an ease when it comes to the school work. Lastly,, the most known

preconception is that they take easy majors because they are only here for their sport, not school,
which perceives student athletes as dumb. I plan to address these preconceptions by sharing my

own personal experience with being a student-athlete, along with displaying statics that I find

during my research which will falsify these preconceptions.