A tennis player from Lebanon, Marco Azar arrived at Johns Hopkins University in the autumn of 2021, chose Computer Engineering as his major, and graduated having ranked 10th in programme history for both career singles wins and career doubles wins. He never received an athletic scholarship. He chose one of the world's most academically demanding universities because it was the right fit, and the tennis followed from there.
This is the only story in this series about a Division III athlete. That distinction matters, and it is worth explaining why before anything else.
NCAA Division III programmes do not offer athletic scholarships. The athletes who compete at that level are there because the institution fits their academic ambitions, their competitive environment, and their sense of what the college experience should be, not because someone is paying for their education in exchange for athletic performance. For families who have been following this series and thinking primarily about scholarship opportunities, Division III can look like a lesser option. Marco Azar's career at Johns Hopkins is a clear argument against that assumption.
Johns Hopkins University is ranked among the top fifteen universities in the world. Its engineering programmes are among the best available anywhere. Its research output, its graduate school connections, and its professional networks are exceptional. Marco chose it because it was the right place for him, and he competed for four years at a level that placed him 10th all-time in programme history for both career singles wins with 54 and career doubles wins with 61.
That is not a consolation prize. It is one of the most complete student-athlete careers in this series.
Marco grew up in Lebanon, a country that was experiencing significant economic and social upheaval in the period leading up to his arrival at Hopkins in the autumn of 2021. The Beirut port explosion in August 2020 had devastated large parts of the city just a year before he left, accelerating a financial crisis that had already pushed much of the country into deep uncertainty. Against that backdrop, the decision to pursue an American university education was not simply a tennis ambition. It was a choice about where to build a future.
What Platform Sports provided in that context was something Marco named specifically in his own reflection on the process: honesty. "Amrit was very helpful, not just in finding the best college, but also in being realistic about what was possible from the beginning," he said. "I wouldn't have been a Hopkins tennis student-athlete without his help."
That phrase, being realistic about what was possible from the beginning, is the most important detail in Marco's quote. It describes a recruitment process where the guidance was built around honest assessment rather than inflated promises, where the conversation about what level was achievable shaped the outcome rather than chasing the biggest name available regardless of fit. The result was Hopkins, Computer Engineering, and four years of academic and athletic development that neither side of that description diminishes.
Marco's freshman season in 2021-22 established him immediately as a reliable contributor to one of the Centennial Conference's strongest men's tennis programmes. He went 12-3 in singles and 17-3 in doubles, won his first five doubles matches of his collegiate career, finished the season on a seven-match singles winning streak, and advanced to the round of 32 at the ITA Southeast Regional. He also earned the ITA Scholar-Athlete Award, recognising the standard he had set in the classroom alongside his tennis.
His sophomore season in 2022-23 produced a 10-3 singles record and 14-2 in doubles, including reaching the semifinals of the ITA Southeast Doubles Championship with partner Joe DeMarco and being ranked eighth in the Atlantic South region in doubles. Teammate Thomas Yu, describing what it was like to play alongside Marco for the first time, was direct about his quality: "Azar is a great doubles player and he creates a lot of opportunities for us to close the net and put away volleys."
His senior season in 2023-24 was his most accomplished. He went 16-3 in singles including 7-0 in conference, 14-7 in doubles including 6-1 in conference, was ranked as high as 17th nationally in doubles, posted two five-match win streaks in singles, and was named Centennial Conference Player of the Week in March 2024. By the end of that season he had accumulated 54 career singles wins and 61 career doubles wins, placing him 10th all-time in both categories in the Hopkins programme's history.
Marco's athletic record at Hopkins is strong. His academic and professional record is exceptional in a way that reflects what four years at one of the world's top technical universities can produce for a student who arrives prepared to make the most of it.
He majored in Computer Engineering, one of the most technically demanding and professionally valuable undergraduate programmes available at any institution. He completed internships at The Business of Doing Good and TEDMOB, gaining professional experience in the technology and social impact space during his college years. He is fluent in French, Spanish, and Arabic, a linguistic range that reflects both his Lebanese background and the intellectual environment Hopkins cultivates.
That combination, a computer engineering degree from Hopkins, professional internship experience, and multilingual fluency, is not simply a strong CV for a graduate. It is the product of four years of disciplined, purposeful work in an environment that was chosen specifically because it could produce exactly that.
The Division III pathway is not discussed enough in conversations about the U.S. college route for international athletes, and Marco's story is a reminder of why it deserves more attention.
For athletes who are academically strong, who have specific ideas about what they want to study and where they want their education to take them, and who understand that the quality of the degree and the institution matters as much as or more than the level of athletic competition, Division III opens doors that the scholarship model does not. The absence of an athletic scholarship is not a drawback if the institution itself, and the education it provides, is the primary reason for being there.
Marco chose Hopkins because it was the right fit, with honest guidance about what was possible. What that choice produced, across four years, was a computer engineering degree from one of the world's great universities, a top-ten place in the programme's all-time record books, and a professional foundation that most graduate students anywhere in the world would be glad to start from.
If you are a student-athlete or parent trying to understand the U.S. college pathway, start with a conversation. Platform Sports can help you understand your options, your timeline, and what the right fit could look like.
