Leveraging lower-tier offers to attract top programs is risky and can backfire, costing you existing scholarships. Instead, be direct with schools about your timeline and other interests, ask where you stand in their process, and build from a broad list of targets.
How do you leverage offers from a D3 school that are mid-tier to a top academic D3 or mid-tier D1 to quote unquote top-tier D1? So leveraging is a dangerous game. Do not do leveraging unless you are willing to lose the schools that have shown you interest because you really don't want to go to those schools, or you say to yourself, I'm willing to potentially not play college soccer because if you lose the schools that you are leveraging, you may not have the opportunity. So the only reason you would leverage, which is kind of a mean tactic, to the school that loves you is because you're saying to yourself, you know what, these college coaches can also be mean to you and they can tell you they love you even though they're actually recruiting many other players, which is true because they have a job to do. Now let's say you don't want to lose any offers and you still want to leverage. You can still use this similar strategy as long as you're very nice and polite and upfront with the school you are leveraging to. So you can say, I have interest from— you don't have to mention the school's name— a school within our say conference or your conference, and I really am appreciative of their offers and I really love those schools. However, you are my top choice. May I ask where I stand in your process? And that's how you figure out where you are. And because you've told the school you have offers and interest, the school you want to get interest from is much more likely to pay attention to you. Hence why when I work with students, we do start our list a little bit broad and then narrow it because leveraging is a part of the process. If you want more help playing college soccer, give me a call. Links in the bio. Talk to you soon. Goodbye.
