Looking for some current insights on Bates. Did a search and didn't see anything since the current coaching staff has been in place. I'm not only looking into any knowledge about the coaches and baseball facilities, but also into the academics and appearance of the college. How about the surrounding area? What goes on in Maine? Basically any insights into what it would be like to attend the college for 4 years would be great. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
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Bates is a great college in a mediocre town. There no there there. It’s a dying mill town being rejuvenated by low income immigration. It’s created hostility between the long timers who remain and the immigrants. It’s about forty miles to Portland in one direction and forty miles to the Downeast coast in another. The baseball weather sucks in the spring into May. Except for a three year run early in the decade the baseball program is a perennial loser.
That's not current regarding the baseball program.
From the NESCAC site:
Bates (19-14, 9-3 NESCAC) swept Bowdoin in its final NESCAC series to earn a spot in the NESCAC Championship. The Bobcats posted their best regular season NESCAC East record in program history at 9-3. Bates is making its third straight NESCAC Tournament appearance and fifth overall, all since 2014
RJM posted:Bates is a great college in a mediocre town. There no there there. It’s a dying mill town being rejuvenated by low income immigration. It’s created hostility between the long timers who remain and the immigrants. It’s about forty miles to Portland in one direction and forty miles to the Downeast coast in another. The baseball weather sucks in the spring into May. Except for a three year run early in the decade the baseball program is a perennial loser.
Don't hold back.....
Gunner Mack Jr. posted:RJM posted:Bates is a great college in a mediocre town. There no there there. It’s a dying mill town being rejuvenated by low income immigration. It’s created hostility between the long timers who remain and the immigrants. It’s about forty miles to Portland in one direction and forty miles to the Downeast coast in another. The baseball weather sucks in the spring into May. Except for a three year run early in the decade the baseball program is a perennial :loser.
Don't hold back.....
My son has an ex hs teammate there. He likes playing there despite the weather.
Good place for bright kids who don’t necessarily test well. No ACT/SAT required.
As mentioned above Bates has had a good record of late.
Ex. Record last two years against Trinity: 5-1. Trinity is very good, qualifying for the D3 regionals last year even though they didn’t qualify for the NESCAC tournament.
Since when has one winning season in the past four years constituted success? Making the NESCAC tournament from a weak division with an overall losing record is not a winning program. Last season they got double smoked (11-3, 10-1) playing teams from the other division in the NESCAC tournament.
The data I used in my initial post did not include 2019. They finished two games over .500 in 2019 after a five year losing season run. Their previous winning season was 2013. Before that three year run they had sixteen straight losing seasons. In the 2010’s they had four winning seasons.
Note on sweeping Bowdoin: Bowdoin was 7-23 last year.
I stand by my post. From what little I know describing the program as a perennial loser is neither accurate, nor likely to be helpful in any way to the OP.
I've seen them play fairly recently. My impression was that they were not loaded with bats or arms but were well coached and played hard. They hired a new coach a couple years back and so far he's getting them to the post season consistently. From a baseball perspective only (which obviously should be secondary for families considering NESCAC schools) it looks like they're on a good track. I wish I knew more, OP. Maybe some of our NESCAC parents will weigh in.
Edit to say -- good, one of them did.
OT, but RJM, do you think anyone in that division is ever gonna knock off Tufts?
The west division has a lot of parity. Exciting three game series each weekend. Very intense rivalries for such a small college environment.
btw, NESCAC tournament is moving to a bigger format this year. Top four in each division will make it, instead of just top two.
smokeminside posted:OT, but RJM, do you think anyone in that division is ever gonna knock off Tufts?
The west division has a lot of parity. Exciting three game series each weekend. Very intense rivalries for such a small college environment.
btw, NESCAC tournament is moving to a bigger format this year. Top four in each division will make it, instead of just top two.
Who do they think they are, the NBA?
I currently reside in MA and ME. From what I’ve heard as a whole the kids who play for Bates, Colby and Bowdoin would prefer to be recruited by Tufts, Amherst, Williams, Trinity and Middlebury in terms of the NESCAC. So they’re getting second tier NESCAC recruits. There are addition top small colleges in MA playing in the NEWMAC.
Maine winters are a few weeks longer than Mass. It can be really cold in April. It’s typically ten degrees colder in Southern Maine (Portland and lakes region) than the Boston area. Bates, Colby and Bowdoin are north of Portland.
Southern Maine and Saint Joseph’s get some Massachusetts top D3 kids to come to Maine. But they’re ranked programs. Academically it’s a completely different world.
Daddycougar, Being from Wisconsin your son must be used to the kind of weather he would see in Maine. Is your son looking at any other NESCAC schools?
smokeminside posted:OT, but RJM, do you think anyone in that division is ever gonna knock off Tufts?
The west division has a lot of parity. Exciting three game series each weekend. Very intense rivalries for such a small college environment.
btw, NESCAC tournament is moving to a bigger format this year. Top four in each division will make it, instead of just top two.
Tufts doesn’t win every year. But they’re the most consistently in the hunt. A friend’s son played for Trinity when they won the D3 national championship. Some parents from MA told me their son’s wanted to go to Tufts until they met the coach. Two of these kids would have swung the pendulum that year. A few years ago Trinity last a great coach to Harvard.
I’m not suggesting players stay away from Tufts due to the coach. Most of his players love him. But he’s an acquired taste. Picture a hard scramble, blue collar coach who grew up in Jamaica Plain MA coaching a roster where half the kids came from prep schools.
Amherst has been a consistent winner the past few years. I make a couple of Tufts games per season. I prefer to get to BC games to watch ACC games. I talk to parents of players when possible to get an idea of what they’re up to. But I don’t follow closely.
When I was little we lived near Amherst. My first dog’s official pedigree name was Lord Jeffrey of Amherst. Poor dog! We named him after an oppressive white guy Amherst College washed their hands of. Ironically, the dog was black.
I have two good friends who went to Bates and have been successful businessmen and family men. One played football and the other played lacrosse. They loved it there, and speak fondly of the education, athletics and experiences at Bates. If your education is first and foremost don't let the weather be the deciding factor. Go there and experience it for yourself to determine if it is a fit. My kid grew up in Virginia his whole life and didn't want to leave the nice weather here until a great opportunity in upstate NY crossed his path. Warm weather kids learn how to stay warm and adapt quickly.
Heck, my wife is from Maine and we love it up there (in the summer)! ;-)
RJM posted:I currently reside in MA and ME. From what I’ve heard as a whole the kids who play for Bates, Colby and Bowdoin would prefer to be recruited by Tufts, Amherst, Williams, Trinity and Middlebury in terms of the NESCAC. So they’re getting second tier NESCAC recruits. There are addition top small colleges in MA playing in the NEWMAC.
RJM - who do you like in the NEWMAC?
All, thanks for the replies. They are all very helpful and give a lot to think about. We have not been to Maine yet, and I don't hear much about Maine in these parts, so its been interesting researching. Thought I'd ask for more personal insight from you all and, as always, you provided.
Smoke, yes, he would be used to the weather. In fact, it might be a vast improvement. We had our first snow yesterday and it won't hit over 40 degrees in the near future. From the NESCAC, Middlebury was also interested, but may have gone in another direction (son has to contact them again). He has offers to other D3's and is still being considered for several D1's and a couple of D2s, but he obviously would be the last of the recruiting class for the D1s and he's not sure that's the best place to be. However, none of these other schools have the reputation Bates has academically. Further, according to the Net Price Calculator, Bates may also be the cheapest school. Although he would like to decide based on baseball alone, he needs to think about his future (that's where I come in). His recruiting is coming to an end and we'll be making a decision soon. The RC from Bates has been swaying son. We'll be heading there for a visit in a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd get as much information as possible before we go. Thanks again.
Gunner Mack Jr. posted:RJM posted:I currently reside in MA and ME. From what I’ve heard as a whole the kids who play for Bates, Colby and Bowdoin would prefer to be recruited by Tufts, Amherst, Williams, Trinity and Middlebury in terms of the NESCAC. So they’re getting second tier NESCAC recruits. There are addition top small colleges in MA playing in the NEWMAC.
RJM - who do you like in the NEWMAC?
I barely follow the NESCAC other than going to a couple of Tufts games and listening to what goes on. I’d be guessing on the NEWMAC. I watched a couple of Babson games when (former poster) 3rd Gen’s son was there. I saw an MIT game a couple of years ago when I had nothing to do one Saturday afternoon.
If I pick Wheaton, Babson and MIT I can’t go wrong. Wheaton used to win it every year. Babson used to be the annual bridesmaid. They have stepped it up competitively. MIT won the conference tournament last year. I believe after those three it’s the y’all bus as Dabo Sweeney calls it (Rest of y’all).
Some Bates data points:
2019 Player Distribution by State
2019 Player Distribution by Primary Position
2019 Team Roster Insights
NESCAC 2019 Conference Standings
Bates W/L Last 5 years
2018 EADA Report
2018 Expense by Sport
10 Year Budget Expense
NESCAC 2019 Conference Comparison
2018 Conference Comparison
2017 Conference Comparison
You dont send your son to Maine for baseball; you send your son to Bates because of the quality of education he gets and the paths which open up over the decade following graduation.
Where do Bates' graduates go? Which employers seek them out? Is it a pipeline to graduate schools (if that's in the cards)? How's its network?
The CDS provided a lot of this info. Then ask the RC where baseball grads from the last five graduating years have landed. If it's a school which envelopes its students, he'll have all the answers.
I am probably going to get bashed for this, not trying to step on any toes, but I see mention of all of these expensive D2s and D3s, etc... and baseball and I am always wondering why.....unless money/cost have ZERO bearing on the decision. I have a cousin who went to Washington and Lee, went into extreme student debt for the "prestige" of having that degree. Was it worth it? Don't know but he ended up at the big in-state public school for grad school....which he would have ended up at anyway if he had gone to one of our in-state schools to begin with. If you are a fan of Dave Ramsey......and know what he says about paying for college, then get the most bang for the buck.....in my opinion a degree is a degree, as long is comes from an accredited school. I could sit here all day and add more schools to the list below, but I just stuck with Maine.
School Yearly Tuition (in-state) Average Starting Salary of Grads
Bates $52,042 $41,000
Univ. of S. Maine $7,336 $38,000
Univ. of Maine $8,580 $59,000
You can find great schools in many places.
The weather in the Mid-Atlantic is hard for college baseball, the weather in NE is god awful for baseball, the weather in Maine is just silly for baseball.
If you want to go there for the school, wonderful but the baseball is going to be another world IMO
Stayfocused, you're absolutely correct about looking at price of the education. My oldest son turned down 2 D1 schools because he would've been paying about $100,000 more for his education at those schools than the D2 school he decided to go to (no athletic money from either). That was tough for him to turn down a chance to play at a D1, but when he really thought about it, it was the only decision which made sense.
However, one thing to consider when bringing up the cost of the school as they have listed, as you did above, is that the listed cost to attend is rarely what you'll actually pay. Using the Net Price Calculator is a must when considering a school. Its not 100% accurate, but I think its pretty close. There's a huge difference in colleges with the way they give out money, so I would highly encourage anyone to fill it out before ruling a school out. For instance, the amount Bates will give my son to attend is staggering. It actually would make Bates much, much cheaper than our own state schools for my son (which is one reason he's considering it). I think this is especially true for people like my family who are from very rural areas where the cost of living is so much less than on the east or west coasts (a nice 1400 square foot house here costs $70,000). Just wanted to point that out to those who may be new to all this. Again, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread.
Why not just go to Payscale.com for best ROI colleges. I will just note NEWMAC has 3 of top 22 and 4 of top 32 schools. The US academies clearly the best deals too.
https://www.payscale.com/college-roi
Gunner, thanks for the link to that site, I had never seen that site before. Another good guide to have when deciding on a college.
stayfocused posted:I am probably going to get bashed for this, not trying to step on any toes, but I see mention of all of these expensive D2s and D3s, etc... and baseball and I am always wondering why.....unless money/cost have ZERO bearing on the decision. I have a cousin who went to Washington and Lee, went into extreme student debt for the "prestige" of having that degree. Was it worth it? Don't know but he ended up at the big in-state public school for grad school....which he would have ended up at anyway if he had gone to one of our in-state schools to begin with. If you are a fan of Dave Ramsey......and know what he says about paying for college, then get the most bang for the buck.....in my opinion a degree is a degree, as long is comes from an accredited school. I could sit here all day and add more schools to the list below, but I just stuck with Maine.
School Yearly Tuition (in-state) Average Starting Salary of Grads
Bates $52,042 $41,000
Univ. of S. Maine $7,336 $38,000
Univ. of Maine $8,580 $59,000
Stayfocused - I somewhat agree with you. However, in your example it really isn't always about just the school. It is about what you study at school + the school + how the student performs + alumni network at the school that makes a graduate's skills/experience/education marketable to the world.
Washington & Lee is a great school, and I know a handful of successful grads as I don't live that far from campus. They recruited my son, so I'm very familiar with the school. Yes, finances are important but it isn't the only consideration. When you look at LACs it is somewhat squishy (my opinion) to compare. When you look at STEM and business degrees (for example) I think it is easier to evaluate schools on a more level playing field. Furthermore, I think you need to look at the avg starting salary for each major at the specific college within the University. The devil is in details.
PS....Full disclosure - I have many extended family members who went to USM and UMaine Orono. We have four UMaine Orono engineering school grads in the family.
As always, JMO.
I’m not questioning Bates academics. But this is a college baseball site. If baseball is a consideration Bates is not a place I would prefer to go to play baseball. There are other top academic D3’s to attend, get a great education and not freeze your arse off while losing.
If anyone thinks playing in the Boston area, New York area or Philadelphia area is cold you ain’t seen nothing yet if you haven’t sat through a game in central Maine in April. Go sit in a freezer for three hours. And turn the temperature down.
The high school baseball season in Maine doesn’t even start until mid April due to the weather. The high sports association prefers it be at least thirty before high school kids start playing. Fifty would be a warm day. Once May rolls around it starts being nice out.
I would also add that a guy from Eau Claire, Green Bay, or Minneapolis would have zero problem with the weather in Maine, especially the Southern part. The Maritime air does have a bite to it, but...
To the OP, Bates has a very good rep as a school, and tends to have happy students. Probably has a bit of that East Coast class thing to it, though less so than at some other schools. Am surprised that it is much cheaper than any other comparable colleges. We found that Swarthmore, Amherst, and Grinnell(in that order) gave us the most money off. It's all about the endowment, usually.
stayfocused posted:I am probably going to get bashed for this, not trying to step on any toes, but I see mention of all of these expensive D2s and D3s, etc... and baseball and I am always wondering why.....unless money/cost have ZERO bearing on the decision. I have a cousin who went to Washington and Lee, went into extreme student debt for the "prestige" of having that degree. Was it worth it? Don't know but he ended up at the big in-state public school for grad school....which he would have ended up at anyway if he had gone to one of our in-state schools to begin with. If you are a fan of Dave Ramsey......and know what he says about paying for college, then get the most bang for the buck.....in my opinion a degree is a degree, as long is comes from an accredited school. I could sit here all day and add more schools to the list below, but I just stuck with Maine.
School Yearly Tuition (in-state) Average Starting Salary of Grads
Bates $52,042 $41,000
Univ. of S. Maine $7,336 $38,000
Univ. of Maine $8,580 $59,000
Quick question - where did you source the data in the grid?
9 to 7.......Just a VERY QUICK google search. So there may be some discrepancies in the data.
Gunner Mack Jr. posted:Why not just go to Payscale.com for best ROI colleges. I will just note NEWMAC has 3 of top 22 and 4 of top 32 schools. The US academies clearly the best deals too.
https://www.payscale.com/college-roi
Fun data to play with, but there are some HUGE caveats. The service academies definitively will show a high ROI, since they are free. For the right kid, they are great choices. Otherwise the list tends to be skewed to engineering and tech-oriented schools. Why? Because almost all their grads can earn relatively high salaries because of their chosen fields. The valid comparison is between students in the same major and career, not across the entire population. Take, for example, the University of Chicago. It doesn’t have an engineering school (so a bad choice for an aspiring engineer), but does have (for example) a fantastic program in ancient near-Eastern languages and archeology. Grads in those fields never earn high salaries, but if you want to get a degree in Sumerian, you really can’t do better. Sumerian majors will, however, tend to pull the school’s average salaries down... a lot.
My point is that schools with strong performing arts programs, or that graduate a lot of future professors, etc. will tend to have lower earnings than, say, Colorado School of Mines (great school, btw, if you want to go into a relevant field). Kids from UChicago who go on to be Philosophy professors don’t earn big bucks (although the Philosophy majors who go on to law school certainly can). Chicago’s Econ majors, however, probably do as well as Econ majors at any other school.
I submit that comparing school A to school B for our purposes is irrelevant. The relevent metric compares the baseball player at school A to the baseball player at school B WITHOUT considering his baseball career. Because, the subset is pretty small and specifically concentrated I dont know an accurate study.
The actual information on this subset is out there, but it takes a bit of legwork.
Chico - I agree. It's just good data to look at but there are definitely skews to it man.
Collegeconfidential may give you much of the information you want outside baseball.
stayfocused posted:9 to 7.......Just a VERY QUICK google search. So there may be some discrepancies in the data.
Thanks - the UMaine number struck me as very high for a starting salary number across the university.
The salary information listed for post-grad salaries for U Maine and Bates above is suspect (inverted?).
For school comparisons, a helpful source is Niche. Having done some deeper dives on certain schools and personally pulled their common data sets, I've found Niche's summaries to be accurate. For salaries, they use the median earnings six years post-graduation.
Looking at Niche, I found the median salary (six years post-grad) for U of Mainers to be $42,500 (nat'l average $33,000). For Bates, it's $59,000. That's more in line with expectations for a school like Bates (and the opposite of what's reported above). Wash Lee salary is $76,100. So, while I don't think salary should be the primary driver of college selection, the data certainly supports a correlation with increased earning potential at many (not all) of these private HA LA schools.
Some other helpful information relates to relative graduation rates: 58% U Maine and 92% for Bates. Obviously, there's a lot of variables that influence that data, including a much higher acceptance rate at the former (which means kids are getting in that perhaps don't belong in college) but I think it's an important factor when you're comparing the relative merits of certain schools. If your student doesn't ever graduate, then the salaries of actual graduates don't really matter, do they?
https://www.niche.com/colleges/university-of-maine/
Dirtbag30 posted:The salary information listed for post-grad salaries for U Maine and Bates above is suspect (inverted?).
For school comparisons, a helpful source is Niche. Having done some deeper dives on certain schools and personally pulled their common data sets, I've found Niche's summaries to be accurate. For salaries, they use the median earnings six years post-graduation.
Looking at Niche, I found the median salary (six years post-grad) for U of Mainers to be $42,500 (nat'l average $33,000). For Bates, it's $59,000. That's more in line with expectations for a school like Bates (and the opposite of what's reported above). Wash Lee salary is $76,100. So, while I don't think salary should be the primary driver of college selection, the data certainly supports a correlation with increased earning potential at many (not all) of these private HA LA schools.
Some other helpful information relates to relative graduation rates: 58% U Maine and 92% for Bates. Obviously, there's a lot of variables that influence that data, including a much higher acceptance rate at the former (which means kids are getting in that perhaps don't belong in college) but I think it's an important factor when you're comparing the relative merits of certain schools. If your student doesn't ever graduate, then the salaries of actual graduates don't really matter, do they?
https://www.niche.com/colleges/university-of-maine/
I like Niche too. If you go to the school and scroll down to the salary information there is the ability to click on "read more about life after graduation". If you click on that you will get what is essentially a look at the middle 50 for salary - so you can kind of see a bell curve and the tails. It also shows you average salaries out 2 years as well. That answers Chico's concern.
A few additional points:
1) Most salary data in these surveys is self-reported. People who are under- or unemployed are less likely to report. And it is rarely possible to verify info from those that do report.
2) Schools with high numbers of students in fields that require extensive graduate education (e.g., lots of pre-meds) or in low-earning fields (performing arts, academia) are going to bring down overall averages. A cardiothoracic surgeon might spend 13 years post-college as a med student and resident--that makes their 10-year earnings estimates look awful.
3) Most people end up working in the same region where they go to college or grad school. Schools in NYC tend to report high salaries in part because salaries in that city are higher--but so is the cost of living.
4) STEM majors are great for those who lean that way. But liberal arts degrees are ok, too:
"National and local data shows that unemployment rates are essentially the same for STEM majors as they are for humanities majors; and although liberal arts majors have somewhat lower starting salaries, their salaries rise more quickly over the course of their working lives than do those of engineers. ... [L]iberal arts majors often outstrip STEM graduates in lifetime earnings and in job satisfaction ratings." https://www.seattletimes.com/o...nd-job-satisfaction/
Look at average salaries in the fields your kid is interested in (and in places he might want to live). Then see how grads from a particular school do in those fields--what employers recruit on campus, what is the reputation of the school among those now working in that specialty, etc. Where to find this info varies, as does the quality of the info. But IMO, data showing average earnings for all grads of a given institution mainly show you which places have the highest percentages of engineers, urbanites and maybe kids who go to work in finance.
A further thought: This has gone really far afield from the initial topic (which is OK with me). .. Bates is a great school--my oldest visited, and I know a kid who is there. The campus is beautiful as is that area of Maine. Lewiston itself is a big negative to me, but the school tries to make lemonade from that particular lemon by giving students lots of opportunities to work on projects in the community. Bates was founded by abolitionists and has always emphasized social justice causes. Students tend to be very liberal and more than a little quirky. It's not for everyone (my kid decided not to apply), but is one of the best small liberal arts colleges in the country. I don't know a thing about their baseball program.
Dirtbag30 - that makes a LOT more sense to me. Thanks for the research.
Three years after graduation, my son's baseball class would show four with incomes below $10,000, four with incomes over $100,000. All graduated. Three were in pro ball, one in medical school (those being under 10k). Four were in Investment banking or consulting.
What's the median? Or, say nine were in his class and the added one was in grad school; the median income three years post graduation would be 10k (or less). Or, one less was in grad school in which case the median would be 100k.
Absolutely worthless data points upon which to draw conclusions.
A family considering the school where their son will play baseball - ignoring the quality of baseball - should consider the majors of the past years baseball players and what they are doing in whatever time frame you want. The salary of a Chem E is irrelevant if there are zero Chem E baseball majors; the salary of a communications major is relevant if there are communication baseball majors.
I also find the salary stats dont match with the small data sets I accumulate through my kids classmates and teammates.
(For example, a friend of D was awarded a fellowship to study the indigenous population of Brazil. Minimal salary. Parlayed her resulting paper into a Ph.D. program at MIT. She has virtually unlimited monetary upside - if she so desires. Her salary would be listed as close to zero.)
Middle of the class graduates at my kids school have to look hard for jobs which pay LESS than its listed medians.
There is a huge difference between a player attending college and intending to return to the home city and begin climbing the MANAGEMENT pyramid there, and a player attending a college where you have your choice of country and city and begin climbing the OWNERSHIP pyramid of anything touching the financial world - virtually regardless of major or final class rank.
While it's true that a top 10% graduate in a legit data centric major at most schools will have great opportunities, those kids for the most part aren't baseball players. Either the players sacrificed their majors or didn't get top grades in the hard major (Simon excepted!). At the tippy top schools, yes, the top 10% may get "better" jobs, but the rest get jobs the top 10% of other schools are seeking.
(My info is fresh; son married a few weeks ago. Over 25 former college teammates attended, plus another 25 of the bride's former teammates. Got the run down on them over the course of the week. Not a lot of STEM majors; lots of econ majors; a few in professional grad school. Five years post graduation. The school definitely provided these adults permanent vocational head starts.)
There aren't a lot of baseball spots at those schools, but for the few who have the opportunity, passing on the opportunity does have immediate and long lasting effects.
Just to add some detail to Gooseggs post. Many of you know my son is in the thick of his NESCAC baseball/academic (Econ major) experience. He just got finished running a gauntlet of interviews for a finance internship next summer and was lucky to get one at a well respected private equity firm in Boston. (His interviews were all done via Skype since he's studying abroad, and were crazy complicated for logistics alone, not to mention the actual interviews themselves.)
Anyway, he thought the fact that he is at a NESCAC school, and doing decently, AND is an athlete helped him get his foot in the door. While none of the folks who interviewed him at this firm were from his school, several of them were from NESCAC schools and almost all of those folks were athletes.
I was kinda skeptical about the actual benefits of attending one of these schools but not so much anymore.
