There are 5 steps you have to take to win in the college athletic recruiting process.

Taking these simple steps is how you make a college sports team. The first step is identifying the college teams that are the right fit for you as an athlete and as a student. As you consider a college, you have to ask yourself this question: would you go to this school even if you couldn't play sports there? The answer should be a decisive "Yes!"

Essential tips for finding the right colleges

• Never settle for anything less than a college that is right for you academically and socially.
• Don't limit your search to the colleges whose coaches you hear from.
• Set athletics aside as you start the college recruiting process. Focus on the academic and social fit.
• Ask your club and high school coaches, guidance counselors, parents, and friends for school recommendations.
• Start searching for colleges early in your high school career. Your list can change over time.

College recruiting process keys: 3 steps to finding the right colleges

1. Focus on academics: Identify the colleges that are right for you as a student. Your list should include 30 colleges.
2. Find the right social environment: Narrow that group of schools down based on size, location, fraternities, etc. Your list should include 20 colleges
3. Hone in on the right teams within that group: Narrow your list to schools with teams that are right for your ability, personality, and willingness to commit your time. Your list should include 10 colleges.

(Learn the other steps: Next: Introduce yourself to coaches)

Imagine this scenario: You're sitting in a cafe in Switzerland watching Euro 2008. You don't speak any French, German or Italian, but you are handed the thickest menu you have ever seen. This thing is like 50 pages long. You open it and start flipping through. You have no idea what you're looking at. To boot, you're a picky eater. The waiter comes and you point to a random item and hope...

Amazingly, the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey method is how a lot of young soccer players choose a college. They make a decision with little information other than hearsay or some indication that they might be able to play soccer there. Unfortunately, the result is that a lot of people end up transferring.

If you want to have a successful college soccer career, you have to work for it - and not just in the sense of going out on the field and practicing a lot. Finding the right college requires research. The good news is that there are a number of excellent resources at your disposal:

Relatives and family friends. It's always good to start with the people you know. Ask them what schools they think might be a good fit for you. Often, these recommendations can be the most powerful because your relatives and family friends know you and the college.

College guidance tools. Web sites like Campus Explorer suggest a list of colleges based on the criteria you input. Books such as those offered by The Princeton Review can be very useful as well. Go to the bookstore, sit in a big cushy chair with a hot chocolate and flip through some guidance books.

College counselors. If your school has a college counselor, schedule an appointment. Otherwise, talk to your teachers. They are often familiar with many colleges. Talk to you club and high school coaches as well.

Don't be overwhelmed. Spend a couple hours each week doing some research and before long you'll have a great list of colleges. You'll notice that the resources above focus not on soccer, but on academics and social life. That is by design. Once you have found a group of 20 or so schools that are right for you academically and socially, then it's time to focus on soccer:

College team Web sites. You can learn a lot about teams by checking out their Web sites. Read about the coach, the most recent results, and check out the schedule to see who they play. Have a look at the roster to learn about the players, where they're from, and what types of clubs they played for. Use Facebook to send messages to some of the players and ask them about their experience.

Visits. Once you've narrowed your list down to five to 10 colleges, visits are essential. Don't wait around for coaches to offer you official visits. Instead, take the initiative to visit on your own and try to stay overnight with one of the players. This will show the coach that you're seriously interested and give you an opportunity to really assess the place. If you love it, great. If you don't, cross it off your list.

Finding the right school is one of the most challenging aspects of college athletic recruiting. But a little homework goes a long way. First find a group of colleges that are right for you as a student and socially. There are so many colleges out there that, if you are fairly thorough, your pool will end up including a handful that are right for you as a player.

If you can find the college that's right for you on these three dimensions, you'll be setting yourself up for a great college experience and a great college soccer career. So as you start sifting through all the colleges out there, heed the following: Fit is infinitely more important than prestige. Find the right place, not the fanciest.

Anyone who has been involved in college sports will tell you that it's a major commitment.

In addition to games, daily practices, and tape viewings, you?ll have team meals, meetings, and travel. It's no small investment of time and energy. Some teams take extended trips across the country that force players to miss classes.

Sports scholarships can actually increase this commitment, since signing a scholarship is the same as agreeing to spend your free time practicing and playing your sport.

Some schools find ways to accommodate athletes who miss class and tests. Others tolerate absence grudgingly and make you jump through hoops to reschedule tests and assignments.

Many teams also have time-consuming off seasons, which further complicate an athlete's pursuit of other interests. By comparison, other teams practice informally during the off season, allowing students to sample some of the abundant opportunities in college, including music, fraternities, and student government.

In determining the right type of school, you have to take academics into account first and foremost. Do not compromise on your academic experience just to play sports in college. Recognize that it's not all about sports scholarships.

The odds of playing professional sports after college are slim. It's far more likely that after college you'll have to take your smarts out into the world and get a job.

That said, you might be someone who values sports so much that you are only willing to go to a school where you'll be able to play. It may mean compromising your Ivy League academic qualifications to play soccer at the University of Jupiter's Twelfth Moon.

The good news is that colleges are so numerous and diverse that if you look hard enough you can find the right mix of athletics and academics. For example, if you're qualified for schools within a certain academic tier, but aren't the greatest athlete, you might have to consider the weaker teams within that tier.

If this is the case, you should research conferences comprised of schools with strong academics but less-strong athletics.

We've noticed that a lot of club and high school coaches have been asking there athletes the following question:

Would I still go to this college if I broke my leg and couldn't play anymore?

Okay, so it's kind of grim, but it gets at an important point. You should only pick a college because you like it beyond its swimming, track, or baseball program.

If the answer to the broken leg question is no, you should look elsewhere.

The right school for you might not be in the NCAA; it might be an NAIA school. Learn about NAIA scholarships.

by Preston - There are tons of colleges out there. How can you possibly figure out which one is the perfect fit?

Let’s be honest, finding the right colleges is one of the most exciting, but difficult parts of college baseball recruiting. In fact, this is true for any sport. How do you decide where you want to spend what many people describe as "the best years of your life?"

Not so long ago, I was trying to navigate the baseball recruitment process. It took a lot, but I firmly believe that in the end, I found the one college that was the best school for me.

Let me tell you how I got there.

First, I sat down and wrote out my priorities. I knew from the outset that academics were what mattered most to me. But my college experience wouldn’t be complete without the chance to play baseball. By the same token, I wanted to explore other opportunities in college.

So that was my challenge: find a top academic school with a very good baseball team that would still give me the opportunity to try other things.

I started by looking at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Each of these schools had great academics, but as I looked more closely, I realized that playing baseball would be a stretch. Being honest with myself was essential. I knew I could play in college, but probably not at the highest level. I was not exactly baseball scholarship material. (This advice goes for softball scholarships, too.

So I started to look elsewhere, specifically to a number of Division III teams that played very good baseball and wouldn’t require a year-round commitment. Division III sounded like a great fit.

My list ballooned to about 20 colleges, including MIT, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and Emory. It was a fairly large list, so I dug a little deeper.

I considered the type of social environment I wanted to be in (studious, laid back, and diverse); what I wanted to study (economics); and where I wanted to live (in a big city.)

As I reevaluated each school, it became clear that the University of Chicago was the one for me. Between its notoriously tough academics, quirky academic environment, solid baseball team, legendary economics department, and location, it was the perfect fit.

If college recruiting had a motto, it would be this: "What the [insert expletive of choice] am I supposed to be doing?" It's a perfectly reasonable question to ask. Most players and their parents have never been through the process. Or maybe they bumped and scraped their way through it with an older sibling. The pressure mounts as they realize each player only has one chance to get it right.

The response to the question above is an emphatic, Don't leave it to chance! The odds don't work in your favor. At least five competitive youth players are vying for each college roster spot. And, if you're a softball player, for instance, you might be looking for softball scholarships. You can roll the dice and hope the right coaches contact you, or you can grab the bull by the horns and make recruiting work in your favor, perhaps with a college recruiting service.

Surprisingly, it doesn't require that much effort. A couple of hours a week is all it takes to do a really good job. Which brings us back to the original question of what on earth you should actually do.

Let's focus on high school juniors for the moment. By the winter of your junior year, you should be recruiting in earnest. (This strategy can also be applied to elite sophomores or seniors who haven't nailed down a spot. Just expand or abbreviate the timeframe.)

So let's learn how to get recruited. The first thing is to sit down with a cup of hot chocolate and take a deep breath. Don't panic; everything is going to be OK. Pull out a 2008 calendar and map out your strategy. Here are the most important activities to put on the calendar:

1. Build a list of schools - Find five to 10 colleges that have the right blend of academics, social life, and soccer. To build this list, schedule an appointment with your college counselor, talk with your friends and family, ask your soccer coaches what they think, and use college selection resources on the web such Campus Explorer and Cappex.
2. Initiate contact - Introduce yourself to the coaches at the colleges you identified. Start with a soccer resume that contains your club and high school soccer info, academic info, and pictures.
3. Convince them that you're serious - Communicate with each coach at least once a month. Update them on your latest exploits and let them know that you're really interested in playing for them. Don't fret, you aren't bothering them. In fact, you're making their job easier.
4. Get seen - Let the coaches know where you're going to be playing. If they're going to the same tournaments and you've convinced them that you're serious about playing for them, they'll probably make an effort to see you play. If your tournament plans don't overlap, go to one of their summer camps, which are a great way to get a ton of exposure.
5. Have the tough conversations - Once a coach has seen you play, ask for his honest opinion. Is there a place for you on his team? You may not always get the response you're hoping for, but at least it allows you to narrow your focus to the teams that are interested in you.

If you want recruiting to work in your favor, it takes a little effort. Fortunately, the emphasis is on "little." A small time investment to get organized, put together a strategy, and actually follow it will go a long way in the process of college sports recruitment.

Don't just get sucked into following the one or two random leads that find their way to your mailbox. If you have only been contacted by the coaches at Desolate Atoll University and Middle of Nowhere College, you do not have to limit your college search to those schools.

Why should a couple of coaches who happened to notice you dictate your future? You have the right to decide which schools are best for you. Don't be afraid of contacting college coaches. Of course a school that contacts you may turn out to be the perfect fit, so you shouldn't rule it out automatically.

If a college coach has contacted you, review his college thoroughly -- much as you would with any college you're considering. Check out the school's academic, social, and athletic profile, take the online tour, and read some reviews.

If you like it, great. If you don't like it, let it go. Remember that you aren't limited to the colleges that initiate contact with you.

Many high school athletes and their parents mistakenly believe that if you can't win an athletic scholarship, you can't play sports in college.

Your focus shouldn't be on the scholarship, but on the experience: is this going to be a good fit in terms of the sports, yes, but also in terms of the academic and social experience. After all, this is college. It shouldn't feel like a prison camp!

The reality is that the majority of college athletes players do not have athletic scholarships. Demand is way too high and supply is way too low. Put simply, there are far more college athletes than there are college scholarships. NCAA scholarship limits make it impossible for college coaches to give every player athletic money.

All that said, it is possible to get college soccer scholarships, baseball scholarships, or any kind of college athletic scholarships. Learn how.

Recruiting is a soul-searching process of sorts: you have to be honest with college coaches, and to an even greater extent, with yourself.

First of all, know that it's important to be honest with college coaches. While you don't have to tell them exactly what you're thinking, it's a good idea to be more or less forthcoming. Coaches can often sense whether or not you're being honest with them. It is their job not only to evaluate your abilities, but also to get an understanding of your character. Coaches don't want dishonest kids on their team, to be frank.

As for yourself, you must be practical when you choose colleges to target. Don't just go for the most glamorous colleges. If you're really stretching —- i.e. you're clearly unqualified for a team -— even if you make the team, you may find yourself on the bench for four dismal years.

As it happens, in learning how to get recruited, you often have to first learn a thing or two about yourself.

Challenge yourself athletically, but be realistic and find a place where you know you'll play. If you're not qualified to play at Indiana, North Carolina, Notre Dame, or UCLA, don't waste your time—or theirs. If, however, you are truly a player of that caliber, by all means go for it.

Take advantage of the resources at your disposal. Speak frankly with your high school and club coaches about what they think is an appropriate college sports environment for you. Talk to other people who are connected to college sports and have seen you play. Guidance counselors can offer insight as can recent graduates from your school who play in college.

Identifying the right colleges is a critical stage in self-recruiting. It's also one in which assistance from parents can make a major difference.

Here's how you can help. Odds are that you know a lot about your kid, and more about specific colleges than he or she knows. Based on these two things, help you son or daughter build a list of colleges that are the right fit academically, socially, and athletically.

A great way to accomplish this is to do some research on your own and present your child with a list of thirty or so schools, pared down from the 3,000 that are out there that you think she should investigate. This is a great way to get things moving in the right direction. A parent may not always know how to get recruited, but there are still ways parents can help.

Imagine this scenario: you're sitting in a restaurant and the waiter hands you the thickest menu you have ever seen. This thing is fifty pages long. You open it, start flipping through, and realize that it’s in a language you have never seen before. You have no idea what you're looking at. To boot, you're a picky eater. The waiter asks what you want, you point to a random item, and hope.

Amazingly, this pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey method is how a lot of athletes choose a college. They make a decision with little information other than hearsay or some indication that they might be able to play there. Unfortunately, the result is that a lot of people end up transferring. Relying on athletic recruitment isn't enough.

If you want to have a successful college career, you have to work for it – and not just in the sense of practicing a lot. Finding the right college requires research. The good news is that there are a number of excellent resources at your disposal.

Relatives and family friends – It's always good to start with the people you know. Ask them what schools they know that might be a good fit for you. These are often great recommendations because your relatives and family friends know you and the college.

College guidance tools – Websites like Campus Explorer suggest a list of colleges based on the criteria you suggest. Books like those offered by the Princeton Review can be very useful as well. Go to the bookstore, sit in a big cushy chair with a hot chocolate and flip through some guidance books.

College counselors – If your school has a college counselor, schedule an appointment. Otherwise, talk to your teachers. They are often familiar with a lot of colleges. Talk to your club and high school coaches as well.

Don't be overwhelmed! Spend a couple hours over a couple of weeks doing some research and before long you'll have a great list of colleges. You'll notice that the resources above focus not on sports, but on academics and social life. That is by design. Once you have found a group of twenty or so schools that are right for you academically and socially, then it's time to focus on sports.

College team websites – You can learn a lot about teams by checking out their websites. Read about the coach, the most recent results, and check out the schedule to see who they compete against. Have a look at the roster to learn where the athletes on the team are from, and what kinds of teams they were on before they came to college. Use Facebook to send messages to some of the players and ask them about their experience.

Visits – Once you’ve narrowed your list down to 5-10 colleges, visits are essential. Don’t wait around for coaches to offer you official visits. Instead, take the initiative to visit on your own and try to stay overnight with someone on the team. This will show the coach that you’re seriously interested and give you an opportunity to really assess the place. If you love it, great. If you don’t, cross it off your list.

Finding the right school is one of the most challenging aspects of college recruiting. But a little homework goes a long way. First, find a group of colleges that are right for you as a student and socially. There are so many colleges out there that, if you are fairly thorough, your pool will end up including a handful that are right for you as an athlete.

If you can find the college that’s right for you on these three dimensions, you’ll be setting yourself up for a great college experience and a great college career. So as you start sifting through all the colleges out there, heed the following: fit is infinitely more important than prestige. Find the right place, not just the fanciest.

It's one thing to put together a list of colleges you like. But it's a completely different beast to figure out which among them is the best fit.

How do you objectively look at your list and say, "This is the best college for me?" For the record, we at CaptainU are all UChicago graduates, so we like to think about rational decision making.

Snore, right? Wrong! Actually, it's pretty fascinating stuff. The best example is the riveting sports book Moneyball, which is about how the Oakland A's have spent the least money and had the most consistent success of any team in baseball.

So how on earth does this have anything to do with college recruiting? Pretty simple really. It's hard to make an objective decision about which college is the best for you.

To that end, we've created for you a College Choice Calculator (click to download it.) By judging different attributes, you can give yourself a clearer sense of which college is right for you. While you shouldn't base your decision entirely on what the calculator says, it can provide some great insights.

Most high schools have full-time college counselors. Other schools rely on general guidance counselors to provide this service. Find out what sort of college guidance is available at your school. Schedule a time to meet with the counselor. Be prepared for your meeting with an idea of what you're looking for in a college.

If the guidance counselor provides useful advice, continue to consult with him as you develop your list of colleges. If your meeting with the college counselor doesn't work out so well, don't throw up your arms in despair.

Even if the college guidance at your school is excellent, it is unlikely that the perfect list of colleges will just fall into your lap. Fortunately, there are tons of great print and web resources out there for you to utilize.

To be successful in the recruiting process, you have to carefully handpick colleges that are right for you.

Remember that it's about the overall college experience, not just lacrosse, basketball, football, etc.

Think long and hard about the overall experience you want out of college. Tap into any resources you can find. Talk with your parents, teachers, coaches, and college counselors.

Why do this? Accurately identifying a pool of candidate schools will put you well on your way to success. Though it may be intimidating initially, the diversity among colleges actually works in your favor. It's highly likely that there is some place out there that will be a great fit for you.

First, determine what kind of school is right for you. After that, a good way to proceed is to investigate specific conferences or schools you've heard about. If you know of a college through hearsay or because your neighbor's cousin goes there and loves it, check it out.

Pick colleges that are within your range as a student and as an athlete. It's all about finding the right fit.

The high school season is winding down for fall athletes. So what now? What can you do while you're in hibernation over the winter to make a college team?

It may surprise you to hear that, as far as recruiting goes, the season ending is actually a pretty good thing when it comes to college recruiting. Now that you don't have practice or a game after school every day, you can spend that time hanging out with your friends, playing around on Facebook, and promoting your latest accomplishments to college coaches. Believe it or not, marketing yourself to college coaches can actually be as fun as the other two things.

If you have a good strategy, marketing yourself to college coaches is easy. It doesn't take that much time and the rewards are huge.

Since you'll be inside a lot over the coming months, take some time to start formulating your list of colleges. As with normal college admissions, you should have a list of about ten safety, match, and reach schools. The next thing to do is check out college teams' websites and really learn about them. You can find out a lot about teams just by checking them out online. Let's dissect one team website for the most important details.

Today's lucky college team: Emory University's men's soccer team in Atlanta. As you learn about the team, take notes on your CaptainU Colleges recruiting page, in the Recruiting Log section. Here are the key details to look for and where to find them:

• Homepage: Note the team colors and the mascot (Eagles.) They've listed Emory's national ranking 6th (!) and their record thus far this season 13-0-0! What a year.


• Roster: Emory clearly draws most of its players from the Southeast and East coast. This means that the coaches probably go to recruiting events in those areas as well. Just because you don't live in that geography doesn't mean that you can't make the team. It does mean, however, that you'll have to be a little more creative in how you get coaches to see you play. More importantly, Emory currently has 10 seniors on the roster, which means that they are probably in the market for a large recruiting class.


• Coach Bio: We learn that Sonny Travis is new to Emory, but is a well-established, successful coach with over 300 career wins. He coached mostly in the Southeast, so his recruiting network is probably there as well. He also coached at Virginia Wesleyan for a long time, so he's probably a pretty stable coach who won't ship out of Emory right away. This is important because it means that your career, should you play there, won't be disrupted by a coaching change.


• Captain Bios: Looking at players' bios will help you figure out if you have the right sports pedigree to be successful on this team. Jordan Edelman played for Albertson Red Storm, which is a great club that won the East New York state championships. This gives you a sense of what kind of players Coach Travis looks for.


• Box Score: In a recent 1-0 win over the highly rated University of Rochester, Emory played 14 different players. That's an interesting statistic if you're concerned about playing time. Other than a goal a minute before halftime, it was a pretty close game against a very competitive opponent.

In 10 minutes or so, you can get a pretty decent sense of what a team is all about. If you like it, great. Add it to your Colleges page. Also Log the details that you find interesting. This way, you'll remember what's unique about each college team -- which will be very useful when you start to contact coaches.

• What kind of school are you qualified for academically?


• What level college soccer team are you qualified for as a player? Get input from your club and high school coaches and other knowledgeable acquaintances.


• What balance of academics, social life, athletics, and other extracurricular activities do you want?


• Are you willing to commit a substantial amount of your time in college to sports?


• What financial arrangements will you need for schools within various tuition brackets? Can you afford tuition, or will you qualify for financial aid or an academic or athletic scholarship? Are you willing to take out a loan to finance your education?


• What region of the country do you prefer? Do you want to be near your parents, so they can come see your games?


• What size school is right for you? Do you prefer the size of a large campus or the intimacy of a small campus?