There are many small schools that are not D-1 or D-2 that are very strong academically. So don’t judge a school by its athletic program or size!! I went to a NAIA D-2 school that was very highly ranked academically.

Most of the time you will get a better education at a D-2 school. Being D-2 means there are not as many students so the class sizes are smaller which translates into more 1 on 1 with the teachers. Part of what makes a D-1 School D-1 is the size of it’s student population.

the difference between a D-1 school and a D-2 school is the level of athletic competition. The school academically are the same, well I don’t know if they are the same, because I don’t know what either school’s programs are, but they should be the same. Just because a school is a D-1 doesn’t make it a school that is academically strong, it just means that the school’s level of atheltic compition is different. For instance a school could be D-1 for football and D-2 for basketball, but obviously the academics are the same, Just like Yale and Harvard are not even D-1 school, they play in the IVY League, but academically they are very strong schools. I suggest that you nephew look at the school based upon what programs they offer and on what he’s looking for in a school. It sounds like that he want to play college ball, but still is concerned with his education, not looking to play pro! He’ll do fine at either school, he just needs to find the school that matches his personality!

You can’t tell the quality of a school by the athletic division it plays in.

MIT is a Division III school — and lots of large public universities that are not very good academically are Division I schools.

While there are lots of great schools in D-I (Ivy League schools, Duke, Stanford, Berkeley, anything in the Big Ten) most of the best small colleges are not in Division I.