Top ten college softball/academics programs

[exD1dad]

There's always the Pennsbury Academic camp where the girls need high scores & grades just to get in, all the Ivies & other top Northeast schools coaches attend

http://www.pennsburyinvitational.com/index.php

[CheckWriter]

DII - UCSD
stellar education
top 3 DII softball program

not fully funded though.

Agree with all of the above.

Not to mention location.

Not fully funded = $500/year stipend. At least that's what it was a couple of years ago when DDs were being recruited there.

[Dugout Dad]

DII - UCSD
stellar education
top 3 DII softball program

not fully funded though.

Agree with all of the above.

Not to mention location.

Not fully funded = $500/year stipend. At least that's what it was a couple of years ago when DDs were being recruited there.

Still only $500 a year and a lot of travel with the time demand of a DI

[Pale Rider]

Well, I think you can put them in categories:

Ivy League - D1 - top one gets berth to NCAA tourney - Penn won it last year, Dartmouth won North division, and Harvard has won it recently in the past. Princeton won it for years, but not recently, but they now have a great coach. The coaches from these 4 programs are going to Cali and Texas for talent. BUT, Ivies usually do not give athletic scholarships, you get money based upon need.

Pac 10 - Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA have some top academic programs, but you must be a beast to play there. We played with a Texas player who had top grades and was a top D1 prospect and Stanford said, no. Lightening fast and a .500 hitter.

ACC - Georgia Tech if you want engineering. Did not do well last year, but usually plays in NCAA playoffs. They have a new coach.

Big 10 - Northwestern but you have to be as tall as the sister coaches are. Michigan is an excellent school and has a top program.

Non D1 - I would put Tufts first, but there are so many excellent academic schools in D2 and D3, your area of interest and geography would matter a lot. I like Coach Herman at Williams and the coach at Emory. But then MIT and Chicago are excellent schools as are the other great liberal arts and sciences colleges.

Why'd you neglect SEC?...Sunbelt ? Just curious...

[CheckWriter]

Ivies usually do not give athletic scholarships, you get money based upon need

Ivy's aid can be boiled down to a single number:

1040

[catcherdad]

Most schools have a couple of top rated departments. But aside from Vanderbilt, the SEC schools do not show up on list of top universities purely on the basis of academics. Same with the Big 12, the Sun Belt, and other conferences in D1.

As for Ivy League Schools, pitchers just like quarterbacks can get some money regardless of need. It helps if you have a couple of full money offers. Many Ivies give full rides to families that earn under $100K or that have many kids in college at the same time. The bigger issue is the money continues even if you quit the sport so it is not dependent upon playing time or the coach.

[exD1dad]

Catcher Dad made an astute observation, which when coupled with the fact that you don't have to earn your scholarship every single year makes the Ivies so attractive (if your DD is a qualified brainiac that is).

Saturday a player who recently did a big whirlwind tour of 6 Ivy League schools told me of 1 team where the upperclassman who don't ever play in the games still participate as full fledged team members (not traveling) because they love the game, of course the roster is over 20 & they are leftovers from another coach. As we all know in a top 100 program these kids would be cut, or they'd transfer to play somewhere else.

[catcherdad]

For most of our dd, softball as a career is not in the cards, so they need to find a place where they will be comfortable and get a good education. Every person has to assess what they want out of a college of university. Students can get a great education at most if not all of the colleges out there if they take advantage of the opportunities given to them.

Three years ago, we went to the Harvard camp run by the Harvard coach and the Williams coach. The coaches said, no person gets into an elite institution on grades alone -- you need some other plus. They said, softball is a major plus at many of our top universities. For some, it is a free ride -- for others, it gets you an admission into a school that is very hard to get into. After 4 graduating players spoke about what they were doing after college, my dd said, she wanted to refocus her recruiting to some top academic schools. Our select coach thought she was crazy when she started telling some local coaches thank you but she was not interested. What surprised me the most is that on her own she took 8 full practice tests of the ACT, eight weeks in a row.

I know many of the Ivy coaches want the excellent students to stay all 4 years so they do let them travel and even put them in some mid week or non conference games (subject to the travel player limits). They say some really nice things about them at the banquets. Plus, if a nonstarter catches fire in one of those games, they often do not leave the lineup. The experience at these academic schools is often very supportive of a balance between playing the game and being a university student. But the player and the parents need to do their homework on schools and sb programs.

[fasterpitch92701]

If the point is "what are the best softball schools"... and... the objective is to play softball for 4 years, that's one thing.

If the objective is to get a quality education AND play softball, that's another.

It's a matter of priorities. Priorities don't have to be mutually exclusive but, in many cases, they are.

Are you aiming at a 4 year ticket playing athletics or a 40 year ticket with a degree and education you want? Again, it's not always an "either/or" situation but there are trade-offs, compromises, directional focus and, frankly, time constraints. There are many other open issues to consider. In the UC system many kids are finding that they can't get all the classes they need over a 4 year period. Hummm.... and they throw softball in on top of that ????

If you just want to play softball for 4 years, take the top 10 finishers in the last college world series, apply to them and that's it. Simple. But be careful of what you ask for as you may get it.

Wishing you well in your search. Enjoy in good health.

[93players]

Regardless of the academic nature of the school, you have to find out what the coach will let you take as a major. I can only speak for Notre Dame and their current coach. My dd went to their camp, ended up in the top 18 that play in the all star game out of 200 on the last day. But day 2, she texts me, is it OK if I do not want to come here to play ball. Of course, I said yes. The coach told the campers, don't expect to take lab courses during sb season (spring) and expect to go to school all year around to get out. Certain majors are out of bound. ND is not the only top school that does this. Other ones force you out of honors programs and hard majors. Can I blame coaches whose job is on the line? Probably no. But that is why my kid is not at one of those schools. The Ivy league schools are pretty good at keeping academics first. The Harvard camps brings out several recent alums from Wall street, med school,, etc. If you want a ticket to a top academic school, ask the players where you can take any major and what restrictions the coach has on classes. You would be very surprised to find out the answer at many top schools.