Navigating College Offers: Your Roadmap On What To Expect

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about what happens when you get a college offer. So you know what to expect so you are prepared, you and your family and some questions you guys can consider asking to make sure that this is a good fit, this is a good match, this is one of your bigger decisions of your life. So making sure we do our due diligence, not just hop into things blindly, if you will. We see a lot of that with the transfer portal and a lot of the schools of those players were not a good fit at all. And it's one of those things where they kind of almost jumped in blindly in some cases. And we want to make sure we're not jumping in blindly to such a big decision like this. So I wanted to talk about this. I'm talking with a lot of my guys that I work with in my program that have offers on the table and I figured I'd make a video about this as well. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former college coach, scout and recruiter. And now what I do is help high school baseball athletes and their family navigate this college recruiting process to get to a point of an offer. And that's going to be a good fit for that athlete, that student athlete, to get a good experience overall, not from just the athletic side, but overall as a student athlete. And if you get any value from this video or this podcast, please smash that subscribe button, that like button down there as well helps me out a lot and I get excited when people are watching and like my content and please comment down below of any topics that you want me to cover about anything recruiting related. And I will get to that. Also check out my Premier athletes platform@premierathletes.com you can put that in URL. It's a baseball specific recruiting platform where this I, I personally guide and direct you through this through digital videos and help you connect with college coaches, help you find schools that are recruiting your position, etc. But you can again find that at Premierathletes app. So let's get into this. So before we even get to the offer standpoint, there's a lot that happens before this, all right. And you need to be found to get an offer, right? Coaches need to find you, they need to evaluate you and then they need to get to know you. So let's rewind, all right, back from this offer. Let's kind of reverse engineer this as we go. So you need to be found. All right? And there's a lot of people out there. It's like, hey, if I'm good enough, they'll find me. That kind of just sit back. I did this early in my recruiting process and luckily I turned it around. But you need to be proactive in this. This is how you get missed. If you sit back and hope that you're going to get found. All right, Hope is not a good strategy, guys. That is how you get missed. No, you be proactive in this process. You put yourself in a position to be found so you are not missed. Okay? Be very proactive in this. And then there's an evaluation period to make sure, hey, that you are a good fit for them. They're going to look at your physicality, they're going to look at your athleticism and your projectability. They're going to look at your metrics. They're going to look at your game performance. They'll definitely look at your grades as well. And then they're going to look at your character, getting to know you and asking questions as far as people around you, your coaches or people that you work with and things like that, to make sure that they're bringing in a guy that's going to help their program and not be a problem, if you will. Because we need to be good on the field, but we also need to be good off the field as well and need to be coachable. Need to make sure that we're making good decisions off the field, not putting ourselves in bad situations and that we are good teammates. Now, college offers usually happen on college visits, meaning the college coach invites you and your family to come for a visit and they want to show you around. It's kind of a private tour, if you will. Sometimes this happens at camps. A lot of the times it can happen post camp camp or even before a camp. Maybe they've seen you at a showcase or possibly even a tournament, and they invite you and your family to campus so they can privately show you around. And when they're showing you around, they're talking a lot about their program. Obviously university student support as a student athlete, tutors, academics, obviously how they run their program, the methodology, things like that. Depending on your position, they'll probably go into detail about that. And then they usually sit you down and will eventually offer you and answer any questions that you have. And I say that because I did a lot of this. So when I saw a player that I liked, whether it was at camp or whether it Was at a showcase or tournament. And I am highly interested in them and I either wanted to offer them or I wanted them to know that I'm very interested in them. I just need to also do a little bit of due diligence because not every time I offered a player on a college visit, but most of the time I did. When I'm bringing a guy on and when a college coach is bringing you on a college visit, this is a huge sign, a massive sign of interest because they don't, don't bring on anybody. These coaches are very busy with their players and recruiting and all that on the back end of college coaches that nobody else sees. It's a busy time all around. And recruiting has happened 24 7. So when they invite you, this is a big deal and you should take that as a sign of high interest and it should excite you, which is really, really good. So anyway, they take you around and then usually they sit you down and this is how I did it and how I've been around coaching staff that did it as well. Once we've kind of shown you everything, kind of giving you the red carpet if you will. We offer and that could be a scholarship offer, that could be an athletic scholarship offer, it could be maybe just an academic scholarship scholarship or it could be a preferred walk on as well. And those are kind of the offers from that standpoint. And we sit back and answer any questions that you have and usually say most coaches ask if you need some time about this and they'll usually give you some time. It depends on the school how much time they'll give. But I recommend always taking some time sleep on and talk with the parents because again, this is a big decision of going through. So as we get to the offer standpoint, take your time when you get an offer, okay? And you need to have a pros and cons list of the school that is offering you and understand, is this a good fit for you athletically? Are you going to have an opportunity to compete and play as a freshman? This is a question that you should ask the coaching staff. Very important here is will you have an opportunity to, to play as a freshman? No coach will ever guarantee you that you are going to start because you have to earn that in the fall and you have to compete for your spot. But giving this an opportunity, frankly, there's some schools, some big schools out there, a lot of guys don't even just. They don't even have opportunities to start. And then over recruitment I would ask about, hey coach, like how Many players are you typically bringing in so you can get a feel for that. There's some schools out there that have over recruitment and frankly they let go of players in the fall and that's, that's a tough situation. You want to go somewhere where if you commit to them and you accept that offer that you're going to be there and you are going to stick it out for the long haul. At least that's how I think you should go about that. And avoid the transfer portal at all costs unless there are circumstances that you need to enter the transfer portal of course. But having a long, long term view and committing to that program as well. But athletically, making sure it's a good fit. Academically that's really big. And does it have a major that you want to study? If you're not sure, does it have at least some majors that you are interested in? Because academics obviously are really important. Getting a degree from that school is important because you're going to have a career after baseball. So very important there. Socially, how does it feel on campus? Do you see yourself there? Very, very important. And also just geographically is it. Do you want to be far from home, close to home? You're running through all of these things and making sure it's a good fit. And then financially as a family, college is not cheap. Okay, Making sure that you guys can do this and you're going to be in a good position there. And then asking the coaches just what's the day in the life like as a student athlete in the program not only for the spring or, or the fall, but summer. Like go through the seasons because seasons are different in college and this is a big deal. This is more than a full time job. Being a student athlete is more than a full time job because you're up at 6am doing workouts, your class is at 8 or 9 and you're going until 12, 1 or 2 depending on your day. You have practice around 2:30 to 3, that goes till 6 or 7 depending on the day and, and you just repeat that and you're going to have days off and things like that. But you are busy and you need to be committed, you need to be ready for this and making sure that you are in a good position and things that you need to prepare for. So when you do ultimately commit, what is the fall going to look like? What things do you need to be prepared for? It can be conditioning test, it could be a strength test, it could be fall ball. Like what things to expect. So you are prepared. I Have the saying, the five Ps proper preparation prevents poor performance. Let's be prepared, and if we're prepared, we're going to prevent poor performance. So I wanted to make sure that I covered a lot of this. Now, there's one other thing. Say you get an offer that you are not sure about yet, or it wasn't even on your list, or you might not be that interested in the school. Obviously, we want to make sure we are showing our appreciation to the coaching staff because they are saying and they are signifying that, hey, you can come help them. They believe in you, that you can come help their program win baseball games, which is great. And you need to show that appreciation and you need to take time for that. And I'm a big believer. Don't close the door unless it needs to be closed. All right? Leaving doors open can be very beneficial. And say you get an offer from a school that you haven't visited yet, go visit that school. If you haven't seen the school, you need to make sure you go visit and then take your time with that. And if you're not ready to make a decision, that's completely fine. See through what you have. You might have prior commitments and things like that. Make sure you see through. And ask the coach, like, hey, coach, is it okay if I take some time with this? And if so, when do you need to know by? Let them. Usually they'll give you either a date or just like, hey, you take your time. Let me know when you're ready, and we'll go from there. So there's all these different scenarios. Hopefully you got some value from this. And if you have any questions, please comment down below or email me and we will go from there. And if you're in this, if you're in the standpoint of getting a college offer, you are part of the 10% of athletes, which is. That's such a small number out of the 450,000 high school baseball athletes that get an offer. Congratulations to you. That's amazing. I'll see you in the next video.