Answer a few questions. Get a Safety / Target / Reach list of real programs in your sport — built from NCAA and academic data, personalized by Ted.
Fill in sport, team, and graduation year to get started.
Step 1 of 3
Only sport, team, and graduation year are required — the rest sharpens your matches.
Start wide, and let real information narrow it. Strong lists begin with 40–60 programs that actually sponsor your sport at a level that matches your game, then shrink as coaches respond, budgets get real, and campus visits happen. The athletes who end up with options are rarely the ones who picked five dream schools in April — they’re the ones who ran a real process: Safety, Target, Reach, all worked at once.
Most college-list advice only covers one axis: academics. Athletes have two. A school can be an academic safety and an athletic reach at the same time — a selective D3 might admit you easily on grades but roster mostly national-circuit club players. That’s why this tool bands on both axes: your academic profile against the school’s published numbers, and your competition level against the program’s division. Work all three bands: safeties keep you honest, targets get most of your emails, reaches get your best film and your best season.
For most athletes, 20–50. Recruiting is a funnel: a wide top produces a handful of real conversations, and a handful of real conversations produces one or two places you’d actually be happy. Emailing five schools isn’t a strategy — it’s a wish. When you know who to write to, use the free recruiting email generator to write the first one.
Division I is the largest time and training commitment, with the biggest budgets, facilities, and travel. Athletic scholarships exist, but in most sports they’re partial and split across a roster — full rides are the exception, not the rule.
Division II also offers athletic aid, usually in partial amounts, with a schedule that tends to leave more room for academics and a life outside the sport. Many D2 programs are strong regionally and recruit athletes who also had D1 interest.
Division III offers no athletic scholarships, but plenty of merit and need-based aid, and includes some of the most academically selective schools in the country. Competition level varies widely by program and conference.
NAIA schools are typically smaller, award athletic aid, and often have friendlier eligibility and transfer pathways — a real option that families routinely overlook.
None of these is a ranking of you as an athlete. The best fit depends on what you want from college — a great D3 program at a school you love often beats a D1 you wouldn’t otherwise choose.