I ran across this site called "Collegefactual" while searching for some info and found that they have a ranking for everything, including Baseball. The list is somewhat surprising to me. For example, in D3, (http://www.collegefactual.com/...eball-men/division3/) the top 5 are Wesleyan (CT), Wooster, Trinity (TX), Tufts, and Johns Hopkins.
On the methodology, they mentioned that they combine Win/Lose ratio and college reputation to get the ranking. Do you see any merit in this ranking method?
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I see zippo merit. With their annual attendance, you can't tell me that LSU and South Carolina are not 1 and 2 on the list.
Bogeyorpar posted:I ran across this site called "Collegefactual" while searching for some info and found that they have a ranking for everything, including Baseball. The list is somewhat surprising to me. For example, in D3, (http://www.collegefactual.com/...eball-men/division3/) the top 5 are Wesleyan (CT), Wooster, Trinity (TX), Tufts, and Johns Hopkins.
On the methodology, they mentioned that they combine Win/Lose ratio and college reputation to get the ranking. Do you see any merit in this ranking method?
I don't know about the academics of Wooster but they must be darn good to be included with top schools on the education side.
On the W/L and baseball side, Trinity is current ranked #1 in D3 and has been a top 20 for many years. I guess if I were to have an off handed opinion about that top 5 and D3, I might wonder how Emory got missed. A strong student athlete could not go wrong with those 5-6 and plenty of others at the D3 level.
Emory is on there as #10, behind MIT, Washington U, Pomona. It kind of make sense. I just don't see how Wooster and Wesleyan got that high.
LSU is ranked #2 in D1, just behind #1 Vanderbilt. South Carolina is #7. That makes sense to me too. As a combined academic and baseball strength, Vandy is certainly ahead of LSU.
I think it is an interesting approach to trying to simplify an otherwise complicated formula. And I think it may be more helpful for the D3 programs. Most of us know that Vandy and some of those other D1s would be elite programs when the academics are weighed in. It is a bit harder to follow the D3s.
Of course, a lot of the school value goes into what major or specialty the kid is going to major in. I took a modified approach to this idea by looking at the schools that are part of the Headfirst and Stanford camps. I trust them to include only those programs that have high academic standards for admission (which follows that they have great academic reputations). In my son's case (2017 grad), he knows he wants to do Engineering, so then I can sort from those camp schools the ones who have engineering majors. In the HF camp, I found about 20 of the 50 have engineering majors, and within that about a 50/50 split between D1 and D3 schools. There are other websites that rank engineering schools nationally and by state or region. We are still a few months away, but my son is then going to rank the schools at HF and Stanford and prioritize contacting and meeting those coaches. For other schools not there, he will apply a similar ranking approach.
This process is a challenge, and while getting rankings compiled helps, it is still a judgmental process to narrow down the list and prioritize.
