It is very hard to listen to all the odd obsessions and chest pounding on these threads when it comes to choosing schools and putting other people’s choices down. Playing NCAA Women’s lacrosse is a balance of competition and academics, find your daughter’s balance.
The first list is the 2021 Final Coaches Poll Ranking. If Lacrosse is the most important thing to your daughter, stay high on the list, seems pretty simple. This is the list made by the coaches of all the teams, probably the best indicator you will find. Most of these teams are common to the top 20, there are a couple missing that sometimes you see in the top 20. There is movement every year, this is how they stacked up last year.
The second list is a 2021 Composite Academic Ranking list (TOP 20, some have no W Lax teams). If Academics is the most important thing to your daughter, stay high on the list, seems pretty simple. This list is a composed from many sources. There are many, many organizations that rank the academics, so depending on what list you look at (Forbes, US News, Fortune, CNBC, Niche etc…) you will find a different ranking. Very standard is the top 7 of the following list, stay at the top of any and all those lists. Again it is a composite ranking, it takes all the most popular lists, compiles all those results into one final list for 2021 (This list is much more stable that the lax rankings year to year).
The point to this post is stop trying to put other peoples college choices down because they don't align with your own, find your own balance.
2021 IWLCA Division I Coaches Poll – June 1, 2021
1 Boston College 2 Syracuse 3 North Carolina 4 Northwestern 5 Stony Brook 6 Notre Dame 7 Florida 8 Duke 9 Loyola Maryland 10 Maryland 11 Virginia 12 James Madison 13 Denver 14 Rutgers 15 Drexel 16 Stanford 17 Johns Hopkins 18 Jacksonville 19 Temple 20 Massachusetts
2021 Top Academic Colleges Composite Ranking #1 Stanford University #2 Harvard University #3 California Institute of Technology - Caltech #4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) #5 University of California, Berkeley #6 Yale University #7 Princeton University #8 University of Chicago #9 Johns Hopkins University #10 University of Pennsylvania #11 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) #12 Columbia University #13 Cornell University #14 Duke University #15 University of Michigan #16 Northwestern University #17 New York University #18 Carnegie Mellon University #19 University of Washington #20 University of California, San Diego
Lol, I don't know where you got your academic rankings, but this is the gold standard that came out yesterday. Way off from your rankings.
Does it really matter which list ?? All of the universities on the lists are excellent.
At a quick glance it looks like a total of 16 schools that offer DI Women's Lacrosse made one or both of the lists that means if girls are looking to use lacrosse to help them get into a great academic school maybe 120 players from around the country will have the opportunity.
If the player wants to go to a Top 20 caliber school as well as play for a top 20 caliber lacrosse program your looking at approximately 8 (in a given year) schools approximately 60 players from around the country will have that opportunity.
If the player wants the opportunity to go to a top 10 caliber school and a top 10 caliber lacrosse program there are maybe 4 or 5 schools (in a given year)so you are looking at approximately 30 - 35 players from around the country.
How many Long Island players have a realistic shot at go to play at one of these schools?
The large majority of players will not be going to schools on these lists that is just reality.
Try to find the best fit, there are a lot of great opportunities out there.
Good Luck to All
The only schools that offer top 10 lacrosse and top 10 academics are Northwestern. Oh yea, just one. Close contenders are Princeton, Penn, Duke. Close and looking in are Hopkins, Stanford.
