June 1, 2023
A key piece to being efficient in your recruiting efforts is identifying your targeted list of schools, so that you can make sure that you’re maximizing your exposure to these programs. When building out a college list, there are a few foundations that we look to build on:
When we speak about holistic college fit, we mean the overall fit of a school across many different dimensions: academics, athletics, setting, geography, school size, area of study or academic focus or strength, distance from home, social life, and more — and also the intangibles that go into creating a great college experience. The exact combination of these qualities that will be the right fit for you and your college experience, and also the relative value and importance that you assign to each of them, is going to be completely different for each individual student-athlete. Not only will ideal school size be different for two student-athletes – they’re also each likely to assign a different weight or importance to where school size falls in their hierarchy of qualities that they’re considering.
Ultimately, it is this holistic view of the school fit that will determine your happiness and success at the next level – and using softball as a way to help you find this fit and then access it through admissions is the most important single outcome of the process of academic recruiting. In fact – if we were to distill down how we define “higher academic recruiting”, it would be just that.
We believe that holistic college fit is important, because ultimately it is this that will best set you up for success during and after your college experience. With the impact that your college decision has on long-term connections, networks, and life after college, it’s crucial that this is first and foremost an academic fit decision. As a softball player, you’ll go through important parts of your college search with a jersey on, and with a glove on your hand instead of a textbook in it – but that does not and cannot change that this process first has to weight academics and the related pieces of holistic fit as the primary objective.
Before you attend your Honor Roll Camp session, you can set yourself up for a good showcase by doing research on your potential college fits, and also putting thought into what your individual list of school qualities should look like.
Before camp, build out the list of qualities that you think will be important to you – and then test out some of your assumptions by touring a local college (either in-person if available or doing a virtual/online tour).
Prior to camp is a crucial time to do research – with an open mind – to learn more about the schools that are attending. As you do this research, start to align the different schools with how they fit into the qualities that you’re looking for – this will help you narrow down and target your list for pre-camp coach outreach and so that you can identify which schools you are going to prioritize connecting with while you’re at your showcase.
If you’re interested in more insight on finding your fit at the college level and more, email us and request to subscribe to our Headfirst Recruiting Roadmap for $99/year.
One important key to success while you’re on-site at camp is having an open mind, and an eye towards discovering schools and programs that you might not have known about, but that may offer the right fit for you. The list of schools at each Honor Roll session focuses on higher academic programs – but also offers a wide variety of experiences, with schools from all over the country, all across the ladder of college softball, and with different academic strengths and focuses. Because of this, when you approach camp and coach engagement with an open mind, Honor Roll can be a great discovery platform for finding “lookalike” schools for the programs that you’re already interested in.
If you show up at camp knowing that you’re interested in 10-15 schools that are there, chances are very good that there are more in attendance that have a lot in common with your target list of school qualities, but that you may not know about yet. Each interaction with a coach is an opportunity to learn more about a school that might be a good fit for you at the next level – if you keep an open mind and think about your list of school qualities, rather than a list of school names.
Key Takeaway
The more “homework” you put in researching the attending programs before stepping on-site with us will allow you to maximize connecting with college coaches when you are on-site with us. Coach communication is up next in the pre-camp curriculum!
