Official vs. Unofficial Visits

NCAA rules identify two kinds of campus visits and the difference is who pays. An official visit is any visit to a college campus paid for by the NCAA school hosting you. An unofficial visit is one you and your family pay for.

The rules are straightforward. The visit itself is the work, because a campus visit answers questions a video, website or phone calls cannot. How far the dorm sits from the weight room. What the players say when no coach is standing there. Whether the building for your major is a walk you would make at 8 a.m. in February.

Who pays, and what comes next

Who pays decides the rest: how many you get, when you can go, how long you can stay, and what the school may hand you while you are there.

Families spend most of their attention on the official visit, and it is the one they have the least say over, because the school decides whether to offer one at all. Unofficial visits you book yourself and you can do as many of them as you want.

When the calendar opens

The dates are set by division and by sport, and the divisions do not line up with each other.

Division I layers a second calendar on top of that. The year is split into contact, evaluation, quiet, and dead periods, and the period you are in changes what can happen on a visit. During a quiet period a coach may still have in-person contact with you on their own campus, which is what makes an unofficial visit useful in a quiet stretch. During a dead period a school may not permit official or unofficial visits to its campus at all. For football this matters more than the start dates do, because football unofficial visits have no start date, which leaves the calendar as the only thing gating them. The period table is in Junior Year: Acceleration.

The NAIA runs none of this. Its own material for high school students describes no recruiting calendar restrictions of any kind, and direct, year-round communication with coaches. So the timing of an NAIA visit is a scheduling question. You call the school and you work it out between you. Tryouts are a separate category with their own limits, and the school's compliance staff can tell you where those sit. The NAIA, Explained covers how that level works.

What has to be in place before a Division I or II official visit

Three things have to be in place before you go on an official visit. You have to be registered with the NCAA Eligibility Center. The school inviting you has to have placed you on its institutional request list. And that school has to have a copy of your high school transcript. An NCAA Eligibility Registration you never finished is enough to stop a trip that is already on the calendar, so get it done early. The NCAA Eligibility Center, Explained walks through the registration.

How to carry yourself while you are there

The visit starts as soon as you climb out of your car or get picked up by the shuttle and it ends when you get back in your car or are dropped off at the airport. You are around staff and current players for most of that time, including at meals and in the van between buildings.

The athlete needs to do all the talking. This may be hard for the parents, but the athlete is the one who will be living there, and a parent who dominates the conversation leaves the staff with no read on the kid. Ask your own questions, but let your athlete open and close.

Put the phone away. It is a distraction and can be disrespectful. You have a few hours to collect information you cannot get anywhere else. Write your notes that night, in the hotel or in the car, while it is fresh. If you are seeing more than one school in a week they will blur together, and the Contact Tracker gives every school a place to hold what you found.

Dress like you would for a job you want, and be early. This does not mean you have to wear a suit or sport coat, but you do not want to show up wearing workout clothes and slides. Your public accounts are part of the visit too, whether or not anyone brings them up, and cleaning up your social presence is a job for the week before the trip or even sooner.

What to look at while you are on campus

The football part of a visit runs itself. Put your attention on what will still be true in your third year, when the novelty is gone and you have an 8 a.m. lab.

• The dorm you would actually live in, and how far it sits from where you practice and where you eat.
• A dining hall at a normal hour, on a normal day, with the normal food.
• The academic building for your major, and the walk from there to practice.
• The training room and who staffs it, since injury and rehabilitation are where you will spend more time than you expect.
• The town. You live there year round, including the stretches with no season in them.
• The depth chart at your position, and the size of the class they are taking.
• Whether current players seem to like being there when no coach is in the room.

If a school is offering you a shot at the roster without money attached, get the word for it in plain language before you leave. A preferred walk-on is guaranteed a spot on the roster, which is a different thing from a walk-on, and both are different from an offer of athletics aid. Athletic vs. Academic Aid explains how the money side stacks up.

Questions worth asking

These are things your family needs to find out. The NCAA publishes its own list of what to ask, split up by who you are talking to, and it is a good place to start.

Of the coaching staff, the NCAA suggests asking about:

• Coaching philosophy and style, and playing time.
• Team time demands, and additional team responsibilities.
• Academic resources and degree completion support.
• Athletic training and medical expenses, and injuries and rehabilitation.
• Mental health resources.
• Scholarship renewals.
• Name, image and likeness.

Of admissions and academic staff, which is the half most families skip because nobody schedules it for them, the NCAA suggests asking about admissions requirements, cost of attendance, financial aid, degree programs, schedule planning, on-campus housing, access to extracurricular activities, study abroad and internships, and the graduation rates for student-athletes next to the rest of the student body. Ask that last one out loud and write down the number.

Of current players, ask the questions no staff member can answer for them:

• What does a Tuesday in February look like, hour by hour?
• How does the staff handle someone who is not playing?
• Did anything about this place surprise you after you enrolled?
• How do you register for classes that conflict with practice, and who actually helps?
• Would you sign here again?

NCAA certification is not acceptance to the school. You still have to apply and be admitted before you can compete there, so keep the admissions side moving even when the coaching staff sounds certain.

What a school is not allowed to do

Some of the Division I rules exist because visits started turning into productions. Knowing them saves you from reading a signal into something that is only compliance.

A school may not let you take part in a game day simulation, which covers running out of the tunnel, a pregame walk, arranging for the mascot or cheer team to appear, and being on the competition surface in uniform demonstrating what you can do. Photoshoots are permitted in a closed athletics facility and not where the public can see them, and in FBS football a school may not arrange a photoshoot during an unofficial visit at all. A school may not decorate your hotel room. And before you sign, a school may not arrange publicity for your visit or let you do things that would make the public aware you are there.

If a visit feels stripped down next to what you have seen online, that is the rulebook, applied the same way to everyone who comes through that week.

After the visit

Write your notes the same night, while you can still tell the schools apart. Send a thank-you inside a day or two, from the athlete, and name something specific from the trip.

Follow-up is its own subject and it is covered elsewhere on the site. The First Message That Gets Replies covers what to write and the Outreach Builder will draft it. The Contact Tracker holds the record of who you saw and what was said. If a visit turns into an offer, Reading an Aid Package and the Aid Offer Comparison tool are where that goes next.

A visit is also the point where families are most likely to reach for a credit card. None of what is above needs a paid service behind it. If you are weighing one anyway, Is a Recruiting Service Worth It? goes through what those companies actually sell.