The Most Influential Colleges in Tennis Today

Badge for MOST INFLUENTIAL COLLEGES IN TENNIS

By Dr. Winston Ewert and Dr. Jed Macosko

Updated: Jan 17, 2024

Find the colleges and universities that have the biggest impact in tennis based on the influence of their alumni in tennis. See which schools have proven histories of attracting and cultivating some of the most influential athletes today.

Many of the best colleges and universities for tennis are also highly ranked academic institutions. At the top of our list is the prestigious Stanford University. This college athletics program registers an influence score more than twice that of the runner-up, Harvard University.

Stanford enjoys its ranking on the strength of John McEnroe’s seven Grand Slam wins and his outsized public persona. Stanford’s chest-bumping identical twins and all-time men’s doubles champs Bob and Mike Bryan rank just behind McEnroe.

Harvard’s second-place finish is driven by the Danish-born Caroline Wozniacki, who became the first Scandinavian woman to rank as the top player in the world, a title she held for 71 weeks between 2010 and 2011.

Although tennis is not as big as other sports, such as football and basketball, in the United States, there are still several opportunities for aspiring professional athletes to play tennis.

As a student-athlete in tennis, considering the most influential colleges in the sport will provide you with several benefits. The #1 benefit is financial. Most of these tennis programs offer numerous scholarship opportunities for outstanding college athletes.

But even without scholarships, you can still enjoy additional perks. The colleges and universities on this list boast the country’s best tennis facilities, providing an ideal environment for honing your tennis skills and maximizing your potential to play for a tennis professionally in the future.

However, if your priority is the monetary benefit, here are some websites you can visit that will provide you with information on how to obtain scholarships and other financial aid opportunities for playing tennis:

Harvard University
University of California, Berkeley
Stanford University
University of Michigan
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Southern California
University of Texas at Austin
Northwestern University
University of Virginia
Ohio State University

University of Mississippi 97%
California State University, Los Angeles 87%
University of Tennessee 68%
Texas A&M University 63%
Texas Christian University 56%
Ohio State University 53%
Rollins College 50%
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 45%
Clemson University 43%
University of Georgia 43%

California State University, Los Angeles 22 to 1
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 21 to 1
Georgia Tech 19 to 1
University of California, Berkeley 19 to 1
Texas A&M University 18 to 1
University of Texas at Austin 18 to 1
University of California, Los Angeles 18 to 1
University of Tennessee 18 to 1
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 17 to 1
Ohio State University 17 to 1

University of Southern California $64,726
Northwestern University $63,468
Vanderbilt University $60,348
Stanford University $58,416
Harvard University $57,261
University of Miami $57,194
Rollins College $56,110
Rice University $54,960
Texas Christian University $53,980
University of Virginia $18,059

University of Southern California $63,468
Stanford University $56,487
Vanderbilt University $53,160
Harvard University $52,456
Northwestern University $51,869
Rice University $51,634
University of Miami $41,580
Texas Christian University $33,660
Rollins College $26,351
University of Michigan $25,894

Rice University
Ohio State University
Texas A&M University
Texas Christian University
Vanderbilt University
University of Michigan
University of Mississippi
Northwestern University
Georgia Tech
University of Texas at Austin

Rollins College
Texas Christian University
California State University, Los Angeles
Clemson University
University of Mississippi
Georgia Tech
University of Tennessee
Texas A&M University
Rice University
University of Georgia

Harvard University 3%
Stanford University 4%
Vanderbilt University 7%
Northwestern University 7%
Rice University 9%
University of California, Los Angeles 9%
University of California, Berkeley 11%
University of Southern California 12%
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 17%
Georgia Tech 17%

Stanford University 5 to 1
Northwestern University 6 to 1
Rice University 6 to 1
Vanderbilt University 7 to 1
Harvard University 7 to 1
University of Southern California 9 to 1
Rollins College 11 to 1
University of Michigan 12 to 1
University of Miami 13 to 1
Texas Christian University 14 to 1

University of Florida $4,477
California State University, Los Angeles $5,742
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill $7,019
Texas A&M University $8,815
University of Mississippi $9,072
University of Georgia $9,790
Georgia Tech $10,258
University of Tennessee $11,332
Ohio State University $11,525
University of California, Los Angeles $11,564

Texas A&M University $6,885
California State University, Los Angeles $7,176
University of Georgia $8,878
University of Mississippi $9,072
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill $10,552
University of Florida $10,770
Clemson University $10,858
University of Tennessee $11,468
University of California, Los Angeles $11,700
University of California, Berkeley $11,700

How We Determine the Most Influential Athletes

For the time period from 2012 to 2022, we identified thousands of influential athletes in 10 of the most popular collegiate sporting fields, who attended or are attending college within the US or Canada. Being influential in the last 10 years does not necessarily mean that someone had to be playing during the last ten years. Influential people can cast very long shadows that can impact a sport for decades. While that is true, our algorithm is time sensitive, meaning that if one athlete’s influence is fading, while a younger athlete’s influence is capturing the world’s attention now, we catch and compare those, as well. The result: we have fun and insightful lists that highlight not only colleges with historical influence in a given sport, but also colleges that are shaping future legends now.

To build the list, we used our machine-learning-powered InfluenceRanking™ Engine (originally developed for DARPA) to find athletes associated with specific sports. Once we find all the mentions of “golfer,” “basketball player,” etc., we produce a numerical score of achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia and Wikidata. Our machine-learning algorithm does not just count citations. It goes several steps further by weighing the importance of web links to and from an athlete’s mentions, meaning larger publications have more weight. Furthermore, we consider web searches and page views associated with a given athlete.

Once we’ve identified and ranked athletes individually, our AI finds the colleges and universities the athletes attended and calculates the accumulative score of all of the athletes associated with the school, for a given sport. In the end, we list the colleges with the largest accumulative scores, and we show, in order of influence, all the athletes that helped produce the schools’ scores.

Find out more about our Methodology. Note: for the purposes of our overall list, the influence of entertainers, TV personalities, and models were adjusted downward.

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