How to commit to the best school for you

Okay, so I'm going to be talking about the commitment process, how to go about the right way and how you actually don't really need to be as logical as you might think when making that decision about what school you should be going to. So if you don't know who I am, I'm Trey Lauera. I'm a former college quarterback. I have tens of thousands of followers and subscribers across multiple platforms about how to help you get scholarships. And so basically what I'm gonna do here, it's a raw, unedited video of my thoughts, of my process, stories, steps, everything you need to make the proper decision about how to commit to school. So if you're watching this, I recommend you take some notes. You really process this stuff because it's gonna be flying at you. It'll be a lot of information, may require a couple watch throughs, but hopefully I can put it into a simplified form. That way you know, you can get the most value, the most impact and walk out of your feeling very, very clear on how to commit to school. So the thing here is I believe that committing to school is probably the only place where you can really use your feelings over anything else. And so what I mean by that, and I'll give you a story to kind of illustrate this is going through my recruiting process, I went through the junior college route. So I did technically have like two commitment processes, not with the transfer portal, but so with junior college. So out of high school I was recruited by a couple four years, mostly NAS, D3s and D2. And so I went through that process, visited one school and I also went to the juco process and visited one juco. And so from that I took away that the feeling I got from the four year I went to, it wasn't what fit for me. Like you can look it up from a logic standpoint, do your pros and cons sheet, plus minuses, whatever, put together a whole spreadsheet. But ultimately it just wasn't the right fit. Like I, I realized when I went there, I spent like a whole weekend, I even spent like an extra day because my flight got delayed. And I realized that it was cool. Like I, I enjoyed my time there. The people there were awesome. The school itself was awesome. I was like, this is, this is a unique place. This is cool. The issue I had was that it wasn't necessarily what I was looking for. And what I was looking for was a much more competitive feeling program and just didn't fit me. And I was honestly like, I couldn't See myself being here for four years, I don't think I would like life. And that was real good clarity. And it saved me a lot of pain by going and visiting that school compared to I went to my junior college. I actually went to my junior college before I went on this four year visit. So it was a good comparison. But at that junior college, I saw a completely different thing. I saw a much more competitive environment. They were striving. They were not really a great program at the time, but I could see the coaches were very into it. They wanted to get players better. They had a good program in place and it fit a lot of the things that I was looking for. And so I looked to them as a much better spot for me. And that's where I ended up committing. Plus it gave me a second chance at recruiting. All things were good. And I just felt like when I got there and I was walking around campus and we're kind of touring the place, I was like, this is it. Like, this is. This is the spot I should be at for at least the next year. And so I ended up there and was there for two and a half years and loved my time there. And I regret nothing about that decision. And that's the ultimate goal that you want out of. Like your commitment decision is you want to walk away with it with no regrets. I think people often have a misinlined way of thinking about commitment. They're trying to think about commitment about, like, what's the perfect spot or what's the right spot. And that's just incorrect because you can't make those decisions, like based with the information that you have. You only have limited information. You have, you know, one to two visits, probably a couple conversations with a couple coaches, maybe you talk to a couple players, but you aren't there. And you also don't know what's going to happen once you commit, so to say, like, this was the perfect decision. You just don't know that yet. It's hard to make that decision. But you should make the decision based on what is the best fit for you in the moment. And that's what I always made my decisions based on. So I'll take this to the second time I committed, which was to Morningside Universe and NIA program out of my juco. And again, it was the same situation. Like, I ended up not even doing any other visits. This is the only visit I did. I was thinking about visiting another school that offered me a D2 school because they were kind of my runner up. And I ended up not visiting them. But at this visit, I went there and just again felt I. Pretty much from the first phone call, the coach just really liked his energy. They were outstanding program and really just hit a lot of the check boxes that I wanted to hit because that's ultimate to me. Like, the recruiting process is a lot of check boxes. And this isn't just in the commitment process, but throughout the process. Like, coaches are looking for you to check boxes, you know, size, speed, et cetera, et cetera. And you're looking for programs that check your boxes. For me, the big, like, three to four checkboxes I was trying to hit. Number one, had the ability to compete for the spot right away. That wasn't really too hard. Like, pretty much all the schools fit that. Because you're not recruiting a juco quarterback if you're not trying to find somebody that can compete for the spot right away. Number two was like a culture, like a winning culture. I was just part of Santa Barbara. Like I said, they weren't really good, but then we went 7 and 3 or 7 and 4 my first year there, and then we ended up going 10 and one my second year there and had like, the best season in school history, all this stuff. And so I was very accustomed to winning. I decided after losing a lot in high school, did not want to be a part of a losing atmosphere because I knew it could be really bad. And I'd seen, like, a little bit of the bad because we had a couple bad strings my first season at Santa Barbara of what it looks like when your team's losing. And it's just not something that I wanted to be a part of. And so I really wanted to be part of a winning culture. And then the third piece was the coaches. Like, I wanted to be around coaches that I could learn from, that I respected that, respected me. And I really got that from. From Morningside. And so I decided to. To commit there as well as the feeling. I was just like, this is the right. This is the best decision. Not the right decision. The best decision for me at the moment. And again, I. I didn't know what the future hold. They could freaking recruit three more quarterbacks. Whatever. It. It didn't really matter to me because I knew, hey, this is. This is to me, probably the best, best possible decision that I could make for me at the time. And again, I though things definitely didn't work out the way that I was hoping they would. I have no regrets about that decision. It's. It's. It is what it is. But I felt like I made the right decision at the time, the best decision for me at the time. And ultimately that's all I could ask for. And I, I knew that coming in that it might not be perfect. And you have to recognize that, like, hey, you may be thinking that you're gonna be a first team all American and go in the Heisman if you go D1 or whatever it might be, but things don't work that way most of the time. Everybody thinks they're gonna do the same thing. And you know, 99.9% of people don't accomplish that stuff. So you have to be okay with that. I guess I'll go from here and just kind of wrap it up. Yeah, we're about eight minutes in. But the biggest thing with the commitment process is just your line of thinking. You don't wanna be super critical of the commitment process. You want to let it be a little bit more free flowing, like recruiting as a whole. I think the whole like fly by the seat your pants thing is dumb or hoping or waiting for things. Don't do that throughout most of the recruiting process. But the commitment process is different because you're making a decision. You're not just taking actions like sending DM to coaches. That's just a simple action. Making a decision on school is a decision that last years versus just sending a DM to a coach. So you're going to want to be patient with that decision. You're going to not to rush things. You're also not going to want to overanalyze it. Like, don't stress about it. I know that's easier said than done, but don't hash over it. Like if you have a clear winner, that's your clear winner. I feel like most of the time people pretty much have a pecking order. They. People often make it way too, way more complicated than it needs to be. Again, that's why I say feelings are your friends in this situation. Because most of the time you can feel your way out of it. You'll be like, okay, this is my top school. Every other school I'm not really concerned about because this is my top school. And that's really the way it was for me. Like usually I have like one or two schools that were like, okay, I like both of these schools. Maybe if like number two showed me something different, maybe they bump up the number one. But number one's pretty much number one. And I imagine it's the same way for you once you get to that point. I am recording this in May. So imagine most of you aren't really worrying about commitment decisions right now, but that's a key insight. It's just you don't need to get super analytical about this stuff. Don't get super logical. You should have a pretty good base decision making, especially if you know what you want out of school, what your goals are, making sure that the school is aligned with that and making sure your check boxes are with that right away. So hopefully this gave you some clarity on the whole commitment process, how you should go about it to make sure that you make that best decision for you. Because as you've heard before, it's a four year. It's not a four year decision, it's a 40 year decision because of the degree that you get, the relationships that you build, the opportunities you have to connect with other people. It's just, it's a very, very important decision. And I can't say I ever took it necessarily quite as serious as I'm saying to you now. But after learning that and learning how important the years are from 18 to 22, it's a critical time in your life. So making that decision, making that best decision for you is critical and I want you to do it well. So don't be super logical, don't beat yourself up of the decision, trust your gut and I promise things will work out the way that they should. So hopefully you enjoyed this. If you got something from this and you aren't following and subscribed to me already, be sure to and yeah, I'll see you soon. Peace.