How Parents Can Use NCSA
Put simply, NCSA is where college recruiting happens. Over the past 20+ years, we’ve grown to be the world’s largest recruiting network, helping over 300,000 student-athletes get recruited. Our network gives student-athletes access to over 40,000 college coaches from schools across the country, roster openings in 35 sports and the opportunity to pursue their dream of competing at the college level. The NCSA experience starts with a free recruiting profile, but our recruiting resources don’t stop there. Learn how NCSA can help you and your athlete navigate the college recruiting process.
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How NCSA helps student-athletes
Our team has experienced the recruiting process firsthand, both personally and professionally. And when you combine our expertise with our digital recruiting resources and tools, you’ll see that we’re able to guide you through the recruiting process like no one else can. Check out our navigating NCSA video series for a rundown on how to make the most of NCSA’s products and features.
How parents can access their athlete’s NCSA profile
When setting up your athlete’s NCSA profile, create a username and password that both you and your athlete can use to access the account.
How NCSA gets you the most exposure to college coaches
Recruiting starts digitally, with college coaches searching recruiting networks like NCSA to find new talent starting as early as 8th grade. The best way to get exposure is to create an NCSA Recruiting Profile, where they’ll add athletic stats, highlight video, academic information, and more for college coaches to review. Coaches will use this information to determine if they want to add your athlete to their list of prospective student-athletes. As coaches are searching our network, we’ll notify your athlete each week of any coach activity on their profile.
Attending camps is also a great way to get evaluated by college coaches in person. Our team can help you and your athlete research camps and select which ones to attend based on your sport, location, budget and recruiting goals. You can search our list of camps, combines and other events to find opportunities near you here.
NCSA college recruiting tools and digital recruiting technology
Since our inception, we have been committed to providing student-athletes access to top recruiting tools and resources, including:
- NCSA Recruiting Profile: This is the best way to gain exposure, because college coaches start their recruiting search digitally and as early as an athlete’s 8th grade year. Add your athletic stats, highlight video, academic information, personal statement, college preferences and more to make it easy for coaches to evaluate you as a recruit.
- Coach Activity Report: Each week, you’ll receive a Coach Activity Report, which lists coaches who have viewed your profile and searched for your information, in addition to how well you match with every college on the report, which you can access at any time. This tool allows athletes the ability to know which programs are most interested in them as they narrow down their list of target schools.
- Message Center: Coach contact information is available through the NCSA Recruit Match platform, so you don’t have to waste time searching the internet for email addresses and phone numbers and can keep all your recruiting communication organized in one place. You can also create and manage custom email templates that can be edited with the help of your Recruiting Coach and sort your incoming college coach messages by camp invites, requests and more.
- NCSA Match: Based on your preferences, recruiting evaluation, skill level and academics, we’ll match you with a list of colleges that offer the best fit. This can be a huge time saver for families who are already busy balancing everyday responsibilities.
- College Search: You can easily filter through schools based on your specific athletic, academic and college fit criteria. Check out this video for a demo of how to use the College Search to filter through athletic programs at schools across the country.
- Recruiting education: We believe in providing free recruiting resources to student-athletes, which is why we offer free online workshops that cover relevant recruiting topics to help keep you on track. Join an upcoming workshop to set up an effective recruiting game plan, learn how to get on a coach’s radar and effectively communicate with college programs to succeed in college recruiting.
- Recruiting Experts: Our team has experienced the recruiting process firsthand, both personally and professionally, so we’re able to guide you like no one else can. Collectively, we share a passion for helping student-athletes, and we’re ready to be your student’s biggest fan and advocate.
View a full list of features here.
Can NCSA help get my athlete a scholarship?
We work with high school athletes and their families every step of the way through the recruiting process, including their search for an athletic scholarship. We help families like yours determine your college cost budget, research different scholarship opportunities and find programs with roster openings and scholarship money. We also help prepare you for financial aid conversations with coaches and college admissions departments, as well as how to negotiate a scholarship offer to get the most aid possible. Learn more about scholarships, student loans, financial aid and grants in our paying for college section.
How does NCSA work with college coaches?
We work with over 40,000 college coaches to help them fill open roster spots with our free NCSA Coach product. As the world’s largest collegiate athletic recruiting network, we have hundreds of thousands of student-athletes in our database that coaches can search through to find and evaluate talent. Coaches can filter student-athletes based on specific information to help them conduct targeted searches, which is why it’s crucial that athletes complete their NCSA Recruiting Profile. Additionally, coaches can see if your athlete has favorited their program. Learn more about NCSA Coach.
What is NCSA Team Edition (TED)?
High school and club coaches play a large role in the college recruiting process for their athletes. This is why we created NCSA Team Edition, a digital recruiting tool for these coaches that provides real-time data and insights on their athletes’ recruitment activities. Team Edition allows your athlete’s high school or club coaches to track your family’s recruiting process, provide assistance where needed, see which college coaches are interested in your athlete and facilitate communications between them.
If your high school/club coach isn’t already using NCSA, share this resource with them.
What other parents have to say about NCSA:
From NCAA Division 1 to Junior College programs, NCSA has helped 300,000+ student-athletes commit to their best college match. But we’ll let these parents speak for themselves.