How to go from no interest to college offers

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we are talking about how to go from no interest to offers to the highest of interest as we go through this recruiting process. And there's really three levels of interest that I'm going to talk about and we're going to talk about if you're on level one, how to get to level two and level two, how to get to level three and so on as we go through this process. But if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Switch. I'm a former Division I college coach, scout and recruiter. And now what I do is help high school baseball athletes go through this college recruiting process and really help them find the best college fit. And if you guys don't know, I just released a premier recruiting app for baseball specific and has all the great details, helps you find your college match, helps you connect with those college coaches and answers really all of your recruiting questions. If you're interested in in that, please check that down below in the description or go to premier athletes app and you can go on and create a free login and get all of the information and see if this is something that you guys want to join. So with that said, let's talk about the first level of interest, which is cold interest. And what is cold interest really? It's. It's crickets. It's crickets. We don't get any interest. We're not getting any interest. And there's kind of levels to this, right? One reason might be because of you are actually not doing any outreach. You're not targeting schools, you are not connecting with college coaches. Maybe you're just playing on a travel team, going to certain tournaments and hoping to be found. Let me tell you, that is not a good strategy to go through this college recruiting process. And others is maybe you are being proactive in this college recruiting process and you are reaching out and maybe it's just a few, although it should be quite a bit. You should be super organized in this process and targeting the right schools of all different levels. But you're not getting anything back. You're not really getting any interest back. Maybe you send out an email, you don't get anything back from this. So how do we go from that cold interest to getting to at least warm interest? And I'll talk about what warm interest is, is being proactive in this process, targeting schools that are a good fit for you athletically and academically that are recruiting your position. That's also really important in this process as well and being proactive because if we are just targeting the Vanderbilts of the world and the Florida's of the world and we're not getting anything back and maybe we're not a Vanderbilt guy or Florida guy and I wasn't a Vanderbilt guy or Florida guy. I just wasn't that caliber player. All right. I was more of your mid range level. That's where I played and had a fantastic career. Just loved every second of it. All right. So going after all different levels. So again that's cold to getting too warm. Now what is warm interest? Warm interest is there's starting to become some more personalized communication to you. Whether that's email personally inviting you to a college camp. And it's not a mass email because what happens is a lot of these colleges will mass out emails to people to come like come to our camp. And that is not necessarily a warm interest. Warm interest is personalized invites and some communication amongst emails. Wanting to see more video of you, wanting you to keep them updated with your progress and them continuing to watch you watch you. Whether it's in the spring or in the summer or even in the in the fall. That is definitely warm interest. So things are kind of picking up from a communication standpoint. They're watching your videos, they are getting your schedule, they're going to come watch you play and they want to keep, they want you to keep them updated as this process goes because they want to continue to watch to see if this is a good fit. So how do we get from warm interest to hot interest? And that's asking what they are looking for in your position. Okay. Because you have communication with them and asking them what their are looking for can help them kind of tell. You can help them tell you what they're looking for. And then you can also ask like hey, do you see me as a potential fit? All right. That can go from there. And then also it can get you to work on the things that they're looking for. Maybe you are one area you need to be a little bit better at and you can focus on those areas. So having that communication and you getting to work on those things that they're saying what they're looking for at your position and and you become that person that goes from warm to hot real quick. I've seen that time and time again. And then also asking them if this is a good possible fit as we go through this process. And then let's talk about hot interest, hot communication. So this is personal text, personal calls. You're Calling them or they call on you, depending on the timing of this recruiting process. Because there's all these rules and things like that with the NCAA as far as the coaches can initiate contact with the student athlete as far as phone calls and. Or emails until September 1st of their junior year. But there's a lot of gray area in this. Okay, this is where you see, you know, the offers and commits freshman and sophomore year. You guys might be wondering, well, how does that work? Because if you can't talk to them until September 1st of their junior year, how are kids committing freshmen and sophomore year? Well, the player can initiate the phone call, the player can initiate the email and. Or the communication. And then you can also talk to them at camps, etc. From them. Or you can have somebody kind of facilitate that communication. And then offers can happen pretty seamless there. So that hot interest is personal text and phone calls and engaging with you, you know, at least twice a month somewhere. So there's just real strong engagement. And then also, this is very, this is hot interest is inviting you to their campus for typically at during the time of the recruiting process, an unofficial visit. And that is of high interest. They don't just invite anybody. All right. This is means they are very, very interested in you. And a lot of the times, not every time, but a lot of the times they offer you there. So typically what would happen in the schools I was at, which was Jacksonville University, Georgetown University and Ole Miss, and guys that we were really high on, that we had on our whiteboard to watch and to had a high interest and we were getting them to visit. If we would show them around, we would take them around campus, they would show up at a certain time with their parents and sometimes even their brothers or sisters. And we would show them around campus, show kind of the day in the life of an athlete at that school. We show them the baseball facilities, all of the amenities, if you will, the dorms, things like that. And then we'd bring them into the coach's office and usually the head coach, and sometimes us, me, the assistants would sit down with the family and explain, even in more detail, how academics work, how the academic advisors works, how we support our athletes. We're selling. That's what we're doing. We are selling you. And then we come typically with the offer, whether that is a scholarship athletically or academically, or a preferred walk on. Those are kind of the options there are stacking where we go athletic and academic. That's typically what happens. And that is obviously the highest of the Highest of interest of offer going from there. But how do we go from high interest to an offer if we're in that high interest category, but we haven't got an offer yet? Well, we can leverage other schools. So you don't want to just be targeting one school, right? You want to be targeting a bunch of different schools and hopefully leveraging interest from other schools and possible offers with the schools that you're interested in. Because, you know, time and time again, guys that I've worked with, they would get the coaches, they would ask them, like, hey, who else are you talking to? They're trying to get a feel, all right? Especially if there's, like, high competitors in their conference, they're trying to get a feel. And using offers or interest from other schools is leverage for you and can expedite things. Expedite. I've seen this time and time again, like, hey, the coach, they, I got an offer from this school, and they. They want to know by this time offers can start rolling in. It's like, all right, hey, we need to get to this guy, and hopefully he'll commit to us as we go before he off, before he accepts in an offer from this other school. So there is cold interest, warm interest, and hot interest, and hopefully you got something from this video to where you can go from whether you're in the cold standpoint. By the way, I've been in the cold. I was in the cold a lot and then eventually got warm to hot to offers. And you could do that, too. But just follow those steps as we go. And if you got anything from this video, please smash that, like, button that thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel or my podcast. Would love that. And I will see you in the next video. Take care.