The hustle of college applications is extremely stressful, especially as a student-athlete looking to play sports in college. Ultimately, performing well in school and in your sport is still the foremost thing to help you get into your top-choice school, but heavily involving yourself in the recruiting process can make a major difference. Here are some tips to make the process go by more smoothly:

1. Research

Before you do anything, you should start the process by researching the recruiting timeline specific to your sport and potential schools you are interested in. Start your research as early as possible because some sports and/or schools start keeping an eye on athletes as early as ninth grade.

• Potential schools you are interested in:
  • Be honest with yourself and how well YOU may fit with a program. That being said, if a school is a little out of your reach, it’s okay (in fact it’s strongly encouraged!) to still contact the school and advocate for yourself. To determine how well you may fit with a school, you should look up academic admissions statistics of that school (keep in mind if you are being recruited, your academic standing can afford to be less than the average admissions statistics of the school). You should also look up the average sports statistics of a school, which you can find on their team roster on the athletics website of that school. Keep in mind that team rosters may not be up-to-date or accurate because of inefficient website management.
• Recruiting timeline:
  • Research WHEN it is allowed by the rules of the sports organization of your potential school to contact coaches and to check WHAT AMOUNT of contact with college coaches is allowed by the sports organization the college participates in.
  • The majority of colleges participate in the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association). If you plan on playing for an NCAA team, you should research the NCAA rules for the division your school is in AND the rules of the specific conference your school participates in (e.g. Ivy League, Patriot League). You can find out more specific recruiting guidelines of NCAA here: http://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/resources/rec...

2. Engagement

BEFORE you decide to contact the coach of a school, you should fill out the prospective athlete recruiting questionnaire found on the college’s sports website so that you can tell the coach you already filled out the questionnaire. Filling out the questionnaire of a program is not enough. You need to also contact the coach via email. You can find the email of college coaches on the athletic website of the school. You can make an email template of what to send to college coaches and just copy+paste it (make sure to remember to change the names of coaches/school email to email!).

Do not send out a mass-email to all of the coaches you are interested in and make sure to email each of them individually. This is important to show your interest in EACH particular school. Do not let your parents or a recruiting service reach out to college coaches for you because that diminishes the legitimacy of your personal interest in a school.

Include in the email to college coaches:

• Your name
• Year of graduation
• City/town and state
• High school report (a description of your school)
• High school transcript (thus far)
• Test scores
• Area of academic interest
• Height and weight
• Sports statistics (your best few statistics; e.g. in swimming your top three events and best times in those events)
• Sports team and coach

Once coaches get back to you, you should get back to them within 24 hours. Keep coaches updated on your grades, test scores, and athletic improvement. Stay engaged but also if coaches ask, be honest with them about your interest level in the school. College coaches are familiar with the realities of recruiting and that the majority of the high school athletes they talk to will not end up at their school and they will not take it personally if they are not your number one choice.

Do not be afraid to ask the coaches exactly where you stand in terms of admissions to the school. Some schools will do even do an “early read” of your application in which you provide them with your transcript, school description and sports statistics and they evaluate your chances of getting into the school. This is part of honestly communicating with a school. Recruiting is like the part of dating that you are going on dates with different people before actually committing to a partner: you need to be honest about what you want from the school and the school will be honest about what they expect from you as a student-athlete. So, make sure you ask.

If you are interested in a school, and they invite you on a recruiting trip, you should accept the offer to show your interest! Balancing your current life of school and sports practice will be even more difficult with taking weekends to go on recruiting trips so you need to weigh out your options. However, going on recruiting trips is an important part of the process of building a connection with the schools you’re interested in. Like in dating, how are you supposed to find out if you want to commit to someone without even meeting them?

Ultimately, JUST HAVE FUN WITH IT, because the prospect of where you can spend your four life-changing years in college is exciting, maybe terrifying, but also extremely exciting. So, just enjoy the process!