@RJM posted:One of my cousins went to Harvard. He also ran track. He said the hard part was getting in. He didn’t feel the classes were extraordinarily hard even though he was pre-med. He said when he applied to med schools he was glad he was Harvard pre-med. He went to Tufts Medical.
My brother-in-law went to Stanford, really smart guy but like to have fun. He always said the difficulty was getting in, they wanted you to graduate and gave all sorts of assistance to make that happen. He was a dual major, got his masters there, became an actuary. I don't think he would have done that stint as the insurance commissioner of Oregon if he weren't a Stanford alum however...
I'd consider myself mildly successful and managed that with a 10th grade education (did get a GED a couple of years ago at 57 years old so I could take software development courses at UT Austin), if you're motivated you don't need college or a specific college. However, college and some specific colleges will give you advantages based on what you plan to do (more opportunity and options are always a good thing).
On the baseball side, it would be hypocritical for me suggest 40 over 4 since my son has been blessed with an opportunity to play in the MLB. I will say that I don't think it much matters where you play to get noticed by the MLB scouts. My son was not recruited in HS, we called a juco to get tryout and a place for him to play. At the end of that freshman season and only 12 innings of not great pitching the Padres called in 2015 after the 20th round and offered him $30K to sign. I told him to take it, it took the 19 year-old him about 30 seconds to turn it down and I'm sure glad he didn't heed my counsel - the odds of making it to the MLB that late in the draft is less than 3% and less than 1% stick for 3 years or more.
If you'd like to understand the odds of getting all the way there, and odds sticking for at least 3 years I highly recommend reading this article: The Chances of a Drafted Baseball Player Making the Major Leagues: A Quantitative Study This breaks it down by round, position/pitcher and HS/College - I'd been a lot more nervous if I had seen this information before he got his opportunity.
Lastly, my son has said that's there's no amount of money that would be worth not having the 2017 season playing at Arkansas. I can't tell you how glad I am that all the decisions were my son's...