CD I certainly do not want to discourage anyone, but just to highlight the reality of how difficult it is to get on one of these UC rosters, let alone play. It is even more difficult for someone coming from the midwest. These coaches are looking at these kids over many weekends at scout games, travel ball games, and tournaments all in their back yard. It is certainly doable, and there are non California kids at some of these schools, but they should just know the reality of the situation before they spend much time and money going this route. They should take the time and go through the rosters and see how many there are, my bet is there are very very few.
There are other high academic schools out here that play a very high level of baseball that are not D1 also.