How RecruitPlan’s 12-Tier Rankings Work — and How to Use Them
By Michael Montalbano, Engineering & Product Development · Reviewed by the Recruit Plan team
Numbers derived from the Recruit Plan dataset as of 2026-07-30.
Ask five people how good a college lacrosse program is and you'll get five answers: a poll ranking, a conference name, a division label, a coach's opinion, a highlight reel. None of them answer the question a recruiting family actually has — what level of player does this program really compete at, and do I belong there? That's the question Recruit Plan's 12-tier model was built to answer.
Why we built tiers instead of another ranking
Polls reward one hot season and mostly cover Division I. Division labels lump wildly different programs together — the gap between the strongest and weakest D3 programs is bigger than the gap between mid-D1 and top-D3. So instead of asking "who's #1 this week," our model asks a more stable question: measured over multiple seasons of actual results, which programs compete at a similar level? Every program — D1, D2, D3, and NAIA, men's and women's — lands in one of 12 tiers on a single scale, built from years of on-field performance data rather than reputation. (The data sources behind it are documented on our methodology page.)
The check that keeps tiers honest
A rating is only useful if it predicts something real. Ours is checked against outcomes: the tier of recruits each program actually signs, tracked across tens of thousands of commitments. Programs in a given tier consistently sign players of a matching caliber — which is why every school page on Recruit Plan can show you not just a program's tier, but the tier profile of the players it really recruits. When the two agree, you can trust the number.
Tiers also carry information beyond lacrosse. Across the 22 programs in our top two tiers, the median acceptance rate is 17% and the median SAT is about 1,468 — athletic tier and academic selectivity travel together far more than most families expect.
| Tier group | Programs | Acceptance rate | SAT (median) | 6-yr grad rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1-2 | 22 | 17% | 1,468 | 92% |
| Tier 3-4 | 34 | 52% | 1,340 | 84% |
| Tier 5-8 | 128 | 74% | 1,236 | 71% |
| Tier 9-12 | 378 | 79% | 1,162 | 59% |
How to use tiers in your recruiting
Use tiers to build a balanced list, not to chase a number. A realistic list spans two or three adjacent tiers around your honest level — stretch targets one tier up, anchors at your tier, and safety options one below. Because the scale crosses divisions, it will surface schools you'd never find sorting by D1/D2/D3 alone: a Tier 4 D3 program can be a far better fit — and a harder roster to crack — than a Tier 8 D1. Every program's tier is on its ranking page and school profile, and your free Fit Score places you on the same scale, so for the first time the question "do I belong there?" has a number on both sides.