What is the perfect college offer?
The perfect college offer supports your academic interests as a student, in a healthy learning environment. Something that falls within your preferences.
The perfect college offer for a student athlete will also provide the chance to compete straight away. If you are competing in your sport, you are enjoying yourself. Everybody wants to compete. That is why we are all in the US and why most of us take this path. If you go to a place where you can participate and it is somewhere that supports your academic interests, then those are probably the two things that makes a perfect opportunity. Those are the things that are going to keep you moving, those are the things that will keep you motivated. You will have that motivation if you are competing a lot and you are enjoying the experience of being an athlete.
You have to earn game time or tournament time because it is never guaranteed. But you can go into a place that gives you more of a chance to compete. What also makes an offer perfect is that the total costs fall either within the range that you have budgeted or below. The most important thing is to go somewhere where a coach genuinely wants you. The coach looks at you and goes above and beyond and genuinely expresses interest in wanting you there. If you go with that, you know for a fact that they genuinely feel that you are going to help the program, which means that you are going to compete. A coach that genuinely wants you there, understands the challenges that come with being away from home and the home sickness aspect.
So having someone that can mentally support you and encourage you and be a mentor to you will help immensely. The key is that you will want to go somewhere where you feel wanted because then you know you are going to be well taken care of. If you want to go a school that you want to attend more than the coach wants you, it is not the perfect offer. That is you trying to impose yourself on an opportunity. The feeling needs to be mutual. Where you are going to go in and you are not just going to be a number, but be a welcomed, supported member of a squad then that is a super important.
When promoting your information to some schools and coaches, and talking to them over the phone or through emails, you may sense quickly that they are potentially not interested. And if they are not interested, it is 100% not the perfect opportunity for you. If coaches do get back to you and want to have the conversation and you send them all your information, you also need to be prepared for some feedback that you may not expect, because the coach will tell you how it is. You can’t let that discourage you, because you are not going to be perfect for every program.
When you get a coach on the phone, the first question you should probably ask is, “Are you recruiting? What is it that you are specifically looking for?” Figure out exactly what it is so that you can determine immediately if you are what they are looking for. They might give other options. At IAM 360,if you are on the program you don’t need to worry about that. You don’t need to worry about hearing that negative feedback. We are not going to tell you about all the schools. That is part of the investment in being a part of a program like ours is that you only get positive news. You supply your information. You do what is needed of you and then you are told very positive things.
So going through the communication stage with coaches, is figuring out who genuinely wants to bring you in because that is where you are going to have the best experience. Even if some of the other things don’t match up, a school where a coach wants you is the perfect offer.
The cost still needs to be right. If your opportunity does not work financially, then it is unfortunate that you have gone through so much effort to get to that point, to then find out that costs are too high. That is the process, a college-driven process. You just have to be able to put it past you and keep working on other options. It is trial and error. It takes work, time, research, and a lot of effort and communication. It takes a lot of discussions.
If you’re on the program, you should certainly trust it. We have perfected the promotional process and the way we find offers and provide athletes with opportunities. There has been thousands of athletes that have gone through the program that have all had fantastic experiences and the schools are perfect for who they are as an individual. Sometimes people do think we have our own agenda. Our agenda is your agenda otherwise we would not exist.
We want every single student athlete to go and have the best possible experience. Any opportunity that comes through to us, even if it’s something that you weren’t expecting, gets sent to you because there might be something positive in it.
It might or might not be what you pictured to be your option but when it comes down to the promotional process that we follow, everything deals with those six characteristics. Your grades, your SATs, the classes that you have taken, your ability as an athlete, and how good your video footage showcases your ability.
More importantly, who wants you. Who is looking for you and who has looked at all that information wants to get in contact with that athlete because they are going to make a difference. That is what makes the perfect offer.