I’ll take a shot at the group questions you mentioned Cabbage. I don’t believe that anyone needs to search for coach contact info other than from the school’s athletic site. That’s should be the most reliable source. Agreed kids (and parent$) need to wade through school sites and do visits. There is really no substitute for either of those. That said, I mentioned earlier that the databases these services offer can be valuable and I’ve outlined below what was most useful to us. Before I get flamed; yes, all of this can be gathered with legwork but there is considerable effort put into that to get it into a form that is easily comparable side-by-side-by-side, especially with a large list. I’ve seen others out here that have used spreadsheets to do this and we did some of that ourselves. However, a single interface that is easily navigable/manipulated, and pulls data from external sources automatically (by Niche in this case), can be worth some coin when your kid is making the larger list that will eventually get whittled down. Our youngest got interested in, and connected with, some schools he had never heard of this way (he's actually attending one) as neither his mother nor I played sports in college and both went to Big State U’s (I was recruited in my sport but that was a different time and a topic for another day).
Search filters/options:
- College name
- State(s)
- Division(s)
- Academic Selectivity (Most Selective, Selective, Somewhat Selective, All Others, All)
- Enrollment size
- Tuition range
- Type (military, HBC, Christian, Men's Only, All)
- Setting (Rural, Suburban, Urban, All)
- Public/Private
- Majors
* Also can search coach-reported roster openings separately
Individual college searches result in the following:
- Basic Info (division, type, academic selectivity, athletic selectivity, enrollment, tuition total [in & out], religious affiliation, etc.)
- Match Analysis (based on evaluation of your video, reported metrics, grades/scores, and preferences you define)
- Admissions Info (acceptance rate, enrollment numbers, test percentiles, financial aid, costs, scholarship averages, etc.)
- Academic Info (grad rate, study abroad, student faculty ratio, majors offered, etc.)
- Campus Life (demographics, location info, housing, athletics, ROTC, etc.)
I think most of the big name services we’ve seen mentioned offer some level of this but none of them are worth their paid plans for this alone, in my opinion. Using this is also going under the assumption that you trust that what is in their database is accurate and that can be a big assumption so, if you’re going to use one, always verify against what the school reports. We found some discrepancies, usually in the financial areas, because of data that was a year or so back. Also, sometimes they won’t be up to date on the current coaching staff but my son didn’t use these platforms for any coach communications, with the exception of one coach who reached out directly via the messaging function. All the rest were pretty much just camp invites. All that said, my complaints of the cost outweigh the value I’ve stated but I do think it can be worth something. Hope this helps someone.