Committed to a School Athletically, But Recently Admitted To Better Academic Schools

BKSquared
Fri, 31 Jan 2025 15:07:00 +0000

You really need to determine how important playing varsity baseball is to you relative to career goals. For my D, it gave her a social anchor at her D3 (and she pretty much knew she was going to start all 4 years). However she was a STEM major who is now a PhD candidate at an R1 doing some pretty cool research. The path to a PhD is broad vs IB.

My S on the other hand was recruited by several D3 (including IB targets) for baseball, but after visits, he found the D3’s to be too small for what he was looking for in a college experience. He chose an Ivy with no clear idea of a major or a career. He let his experiences in college dictate that. He also played club baseball, which was much less of a time sink since practices were limited and they mostly played games. He ended up in IB, but even at his top tier target school, many more didn’t get a job in IB than succeeded.

So to me, unless baseball is something you have to have as part of your college experience, you should choose the school where you think you will have the best academic and social fit where you will end up doing better academically and socially. It’s all about planning a path that gives you the most options at its end point. If IB (and here you need to understand what the various types of jobs entail – I assure you it is not just wheeling and dealing, wining and dining as a former M&A guy, especially at junior levels, but a lot of late night/weekend grunt work), then going to a target is very important. But even at a target, you won’t even get past an initial screen unless your GPA is over something like a 3.6 and you have taken and done well in some quantitative course. You still need to walk into the college with a Plan B.