It’s the age-old story: The jock gets the girl, gains massive popularity in school, and becomes prom king. Meanwhile, nerds are often sidelined in high school with the promise that they will have the last laugh—perhaps, becoming Fortune 500 CEOs. But it turned out that it was all lies. Indeed, being the athletic kid in school was more likely to take home $220,000 more in cumulative salary than your nerdy peers.
At least, this is according to a new study The report tracks the career achievements of 400,000 athletes and non-athletes who attended America’s competitive Ivy League schools, such as Harvard University, between 1970 and 2021.
Researchers found that athletic students were more likely to find finance or business-related jobs after college. Statistically, they are more likely than non-athletic students to pursue an MBA and an MBA from an elite institution.
What’s more, being an athlete — or a football player, a wrestler, or a basketball player — means you’re more likely to get a higher position at work and earn more than your smart but less athletic classmates. get more.
Overall, the paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that workers with athletic backgrounds earned 3.4 percent more over the course of their careers than non-athletes who came from the same college and worked in the same industry.
In fact, due to their higher ranking and job status, athletic students earn a cumulative salary of $1.82 million over their careers, up to a maximum of $135,000 per year, while non-athlete students earn a (still considerable) cumulative salary of $1.6 million, At its peak, it was $126,000 per year.
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Of course, some sports are more expensive than others, and sports like lacrosse and horseback riding are synonymous with elite private prep schools.
It would be tempting, therefore, to assume that the reason athletic students earn more and rank higher in offices than non-athletic students is because they come from more privileged backgrounds and have better connections.
However, the researchers found that even athletes from more socioeconomically diverse sports teams and those with lower academic admissions barriers had better career success than nonathletes.
This may be because by dedicating their downtime to practicing and competing in a sport that often relies on teamwork, communication and dedication, physical education students can accumulate skills that are highly coveted in the corporate world.
In fact, when looking at the LinkedIn profiles of athletic students, research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that they were more likely than non-athletic students to be recognized for management-related skills such as management, leadership and strategic planning.
The assumption that nerds are analytical and athletes are confident in high school seems to follow them into the workplace, with researchers highlighting that athletic students are slightly less likely to be recognized for their research and data analysis skills.
What’s more, those in sports from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are most likely to receive praise for their management skills on their LinkedIn profiles.
The paper concludes: “Athletes’ superior performance over the course of their careers is at least partly due to the development of specific types of human capital that may be valued in the labor market.”
CEOs who played sports in college
It’s not hard to see the NBER’s theory playing out in reality – just look at some of America’s top CEOs and you’ll quickly see that many played some form of sport growing up.
in 2011, wealth It even compiles the most successful Fortune 500 CEOs in the workplace, including former IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano, former Whole Foods CEO Walter E. Walter E. Robb and former Boeing CEO James McNerney are both on the list.
Meg Whitman, the CEO-turned-politician who led eBay before becoming the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, recounted in her book how she used sports jargon in the boardroom, The power of many.
“Team sports are my favorite thing,” she wrote. “When I build an operations team, I still use those basketball adages I learned when I was young: ‘Let’s pass the ball before the game.’ “Do we need man-to-man defense or zone defense? “
Meanwhile, longtime Bank of America boss Brian Moynihan, who played college football as an undergraduate at Brown University and law school at Notre Dame University, also said the experience influenced his later success as a CEO. He also played rugby while studying at the academy.
“Leadership lessons are really transferable — how to motivate people, how to try to get people to do more than a team can do alone,” Moynihan told reporters. brown daily herald. “You can only win in rugby if you work as a team. I mean, everyone has to carry the ball, everyone has to tackle, everyone has to pass, so you have to work as a team.”
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