What to say when you get a scholarship offer

Hey team Alex here. Thanks for joining me. And in today's video, we're going to be talking about offers. The endpoint that we're trying to get to is an offer from a college program. So we're going to be talking about that and how to best respond to an offer. And what spurred this is a guy that I'm working with got an offer. He wasn't sure how to respond. So I wanted to make this video. And the thing is there's a number of different offers that we could get through this college recruiting process. One is you could be offered to come, come and walk on to the program, which is essentially a tryout. The next one would be a preferred walk on. You get offered to be a preferred walk on student athlete. Now, there's a lot of misconceptions about this one and understandably it's a bad name. But because it has walk on in it and you're just like any other student athlete, you're part of the roster, you're just not on an athletic scholarship. The next one would be you are offered an academic scholarship and the next one would be you are offered an athletic scholarship. And lastly, you could go stack, they call it stacking. You're offered an academic and athletic scholarship. All very exciting, getting opportunities here. And we're not going to talk about necessarily these offers individually, but just again, how to best respond to an offer as we go, depending on kind of the situation. If you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division 1 college coach, Scout and recruiter. And now what I do is help high school athletes go through this college recruiting process. So if you get anything from this video, please smash that like button right down here and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video. Alright, let's dive in. Hey, before we get into offers, I want to say this. Make sure that you're going through the college recruiting process with these college coaches with these programs that are expressing interest in you, even if you're not sure it's the best fit for you. Why would I say that? Why? You might say, well, just a waste of time. No, no, hear me out. I've seen this time and time again. Okay? The reason why you don't want to just close a door when you don't necessarily have to close it. You could go through this process and later in the process you could always say no. Maybe you get on a phone with a coach and you're communicating with the coach and next thing you know you talk to a head coach or the recruiting coordinator and you really like that coach. And then they invite you out to campus, they personally give you a tour, show you around. You go to a practice, maybe you go to a game, you get to see all the facilities. How does a student athlete live and what is the experience? Life. And you're getting a feel of the campus. Alright, this is experience for you. This is experience of you going through the process with a college coach, how to communicate with a college coach. It's going to help you get more and more comfortable. Even if you might know that this might not be the best fit for me or I've seen this, you fall in love with the program and the coaches and how they run their program and that you could see yourself there and ultimately you might end up there. Okay, now again, this is where it gets into the offer standpoint. So you go through this process and you get up to an offer. But if you were just to close the door before you even. They reached out to you by email or text and you're like, I've never even heard of this school. Or it's in a location that I'm not sure that I want to be and you're just like, hey, no, I'm not interested. Or you don't even respond. That's like the worst thing that you could do. Make sure you're going through that process because again, I've seen time and time again guys go through this process. They fall in love and have a great career there, they have a great experience there. So go through this process because again, the good thing is you can always say no. So let's get into offers. And the first one that I want to go over because it's the easiest, you get an offer from your dream school. So what do you say to that? Hey, you take it. Alright, that's the easiest one. Now the problem is not many people actually know their dream school school or they think they know their dream school because it's pretty shiny and they've seen it on tv. And honestly, these are the Vanderbilts of the world, the Texas of the world, the UCLA's of the world, the Florida's of the world. And I get it, I understand great programs, okay? But it doesn't mean it's the best fit for you athletically, academically, geographically, financially, socially, etc. Just make sure you're doing your homework. But if it is, you check the box, you get an offer from them. Fantastic. Take the offer. Just remember that these offers, especially early on, they're verbal offers. Now, the good thing with college baseball is verbal offers is really like, it's a bond. It's your word, okay? It's not like football, where they're flipping guys, all this. Now, there's course there's. There's been instances, but it's very, very small percentages, more the exception. Okay? So the verbal offers from a program and you accepting it, it's usually a stuck to it. And when you get offers and you accept an offer, you commit schools back off schools and baseball completely back off from that standpoint. Okay? Now, you won't sign with them until senior year with your nli, your national letter of intent, okay. On signing day, and that's when it is confirmed and you are good to go. All right, let's talk about a couple other scenarios that could be a little bit more difficult. Rather than your dream school offering you, maybe it is a school that is. You're not sure if it's the best fit for you, or maybe it's a little too early in the process and you want to see what other interest is out there, or you're getting through, you're getting some interest from other schools. You just don't have offers yet from them. But you have an offer from a school that you kind of like, but you want to see it through, through the summer or through the fall or whenever the time period is, you want to see that through. So what do you say to a coach when you're either sitting in front of them or typically it's over the phone? It kind of depends on the program situation. Let's just use this scenario. The college coach offers you an athletic scholarship, and they're super excited. They want to bring you on. They're excited that the impact that you could have on their program, and they want to offer you that spot in that scholarship. And what you can say if you're not sure, if you're not ready to accept, is one, you want to be excited. Okay? This is a big deal. A college program, no matter what level it is. D3, D2, D1. They are putting a lot of trust and they have a lot of confidence in you to come in and help their program win. So you want to be excited. You should be excited. And you can tell a coach, say, hey, coach, I am so excited about this possible opportunity. I really feel like I can come help win with this program and help you guys win and get us a national championship. I just want to see this summer through and finish out this summer. Can I have some time through this summer or fall or again whatever situation. And most coaches are going to say, yes, absolutely, let's stay in touch, let's communicate. Let me know if you have any questions. And again, just say coach again. I just want to reiterate how excited I am and thank you for your trust and confidence in me. And I'm really excited about this possible opportunity and I want to stay in touch with you, obviously. And most coaches will stay in touch with you every usually around every two weeks. They will stay in touch with you. And then it might come up to a point this is where the other scenario comes in. It might come up to a point where the college coaches are going to need to know a decision from you depending on the timing of the situation. Because if they're just waiting on you and they want you as maybe that catcher in their class, well, if you say no to them and they're missing other catchers out there and they're just waiting on you, there's only so much time that they can wait. But typically schools will wait, especially if it is in the middle of the recruiting cycle. They're going to wait and see out and they will be transparent and up front with you as they go. Now if it's late in the process, it's late for you and it's late for them. Things usually move a little quicker and maybe you accept quicker and they offer and you guys are ready to go and if it's late and you're not ready to accept, they might say, hey, absolutely, I want to respect that. But we're going to need to know by this date, by the end of the month or in a month or two months, etc. From there. Just so if you say no to us, we can still go out and get other player. So it's good to be transparent on that side. So that's I wanted to dive into that and maybe let's go talk about the scenario. Maybe you don't have an offer yet, maybe you haven't got any interest yet. What can you be doing? One, you need to have target schools to go after. All right? You need to have an honest assessment of yourself and if you're not so sure where you stand, get an honest assessment from a professional that knows what they're doing and that is going to be honest with you. I of where they project you to play at. Okay. And then you can come up with some school list of hey safe schools, target schools and reach schools and then go after those schools. Go after those schools from man reaching out to them, having your personal recruiting video, having your schedule, having your transcript ready and go after them and have a big list of schools to go after as we go through this. I hope you got something from this video. If you did, smash that, like, button and subscribe and I will see you in the next video. All right. Have a great day.