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Best Baseball Colleges

By Next College Student Athlete, 10/22/19, 4:30PM PDT

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The rankings below are designed to get you started on your college search by surfacing schools that you may not have thought to consider.

College baseball is extremely new and exciting experience for recruits – it is an entirely different ball game than high school baseball. Student-athletes will need to consider things like how far away from home they want to go, what type of campus they could see themselves at, as well as what division level is the best fit

NCSA Power Rankings are based on proprietary analysis of NCSA Favorites data obtained from the college search activity of the over 2 million student-athletes on the NCSA recruiting network, U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges, IPEDS graduation rates, and IPEDS average cost after aid.

Best Baseball Colleges

Ready to compete in college? There are more than 1,110 four-year colleges that offer baseball teams. There are several NCAA Division 1 colleges, 15 NCAA Division 3 colleges and one NCAA Division 2 college that came out on top. Here are the top 5:

 

1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2. Harvard University

3. Stanford University

4. University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)

5. University of Florida

Top 100 Colleges for Baseball Student-Athletes
 

Best NCAA Division I Baseball Colleges

There are 250 diamonds to play on across the NCAA Division 1. Schools range in size, and they are all across the U,S. There are plenty of options, but which one is the right fit? See our top picks to help you decide which program is right for you.

 

1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2. Harvard University

3. Stanford University

4. University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)

5. University of Florida

Top 50 NCAA Division I Baseball Colleges
 

Best NCAA Division II Baseball Colleges

For elite recruits, deciding between D1 and D2 can be a tough swing to make. The NCAA Division 2 level has 250+ colleges with baseball, and there is tough competition for roster spots. How do you determine which D2 school is worth considering? We’ve narrowed it down to the top five.

 

1. University of California – San Diego

2. Bentley University

3. Grand Valley State University

4. Truman State University

5. Point Loma Nazarene University


Top 50 NCAA Division II Baseball Colleges

Best NCAA Division III Baseball Colleges

There are 350+ baseball colleges competing at the NCAA Division 3 level. While you may know NCAA Division 3 schools do not offer athletic scholarships, most families don’t realize that Division 3 athletes can get several other forms of financial aid (academic scholarships, grants and aid) that can make these schools competitive with any other division level’s scholarship offer.

 

1. Amherst College

2. Johns Hopkins University

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

4. Emory University

5. Clark University


Top 50 NCAA Division III Baseball Colleges

Best NAIA Baseball Colleges

There are about 150 colleges with baseball teams at the NAIA level. Fully funded teams can offer up to 12 scholarships per team. While an NAIA college might not have been the school you grew up dreaming about, with a little research, you might find it is just what you are looking for.

 

1. Loyola University New Orleans

2. Indiana Wesleyan University

3. Asbury University

4. College of the Ozarks

5. Taylor University

College List Template: How do I make my college list?

Every recruit needs to have three different list of schools. The list should include reach, target and safety schools. Below are some general criteria to help you create those individual lists.


1. Reach School (5-10 schools) – Think of these as schools that you would love to go to but you would be okay if you didn’t get in. Reach schools are sometimes out of a recruit’s reach because of academics, athleticism or finances.


2. Target School (10-20 schools) – Target schools are ones that you are pretty confident about getting into. It’s not 100 percent guaranteed that you will get into the school, but you know that you have what it takes academically or athletically.


3. Safety School (3-5 schools) – Is there a school that you would be willing to go to in order to get your gen ed classes done and then transfer to your reach school? That’s why you should have safety schools on your list. Safety schools can help student-athletes get into the groove of being a college athlete.

ABOUT NEXT COLLEGE STUDENT ATHLETE

NCSA is the world's largest and most successful collegiate athletic recruiting network. A wholly owned subsidiary of Reigning Champs LLC, NCSA's 700 teammates leverage exclusive data, proprietary matching algorithms and personal relationships built over nearly two decades as the industry leader to connect tens of thousands of college-bound student-athletes to more than 35,000 college coaches nationwide across 34 sports every year.

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