The Future of College Scholarships

The whole college recruitment game is changing pretty quickly. Even in my (Jacob’s) last four years of being here I have seen so many things change.

We will start with a big one. Databases. We have touched on it a few times before. The whole idea that having a profile on a database will get you recruited is finished.

Back in the day, even before I (Matt) was a coach in the US, there was a time where coaches would look through databases and video footage. Because the College system was not as big internationally as it is now.

Now you have literally thousands of recruitment agencies around the world with millions of athletes looking to head to the US.
All of them have a database filled with their athletes. Now look, I am not saying that you will never get contacted directly from college coaches if you are on a database because it does happen, just not often.
Not many coaches have the time to sit there, scroll through profiles and watch video footage. They don’t need to do that, and they don’t have time to do that.

How many times did you do it when you were a head coach? (Matt)

Not once.

Now this is especially true if you are a Basketballer, or a Baseballer, or an American footballer. Not a chance that coaches are scrolling through databases in Australia looking for Australian kids. Why would they?
But its truer now with all sports. If this is something that you want to happen, its going to take a lot of work.
Databases and relying on that is the past. The future of recruitment is all about research and personalized communication. You need to be personally contacting coaches.

Now personally contacting coaches doesn’t mean just creating a list, or buying a list of coaches, which you can do, and just mail merging them all. Just because you can personalize with their names that doesn’t mean its “personalized”.

The schools and coaches you do personally contact need to be places that you have researched and know you will fit in. What is the point of mail merging 500 schools if you can only get into 40 of them. That’s pointless.

To find out about the future of college scholarships please Click the buttons below and listen to this Podcast Episode or read through the shownotes.