Data & Methodology

Dataset last rebuilt 2026-07-30. Every statistic on this site re-derives from source data on each deployment.

Data sources

RecruitPlan combines five kinds of source data. Program strength comes from Massey Ratings: we take a four-year rolling, recency-weighted average of each program's rating and group all programs into 12 performance tiers. Academic and cost figures — acceptance rate, SAT, tuition, graduation rate — come from IPEDS and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard. Season results, schedules, and per-player statistics are aggregated from NCAA box scores. Recruiting pipelines (which states, clubs, and high schools send players to each program, and the tier of recruit each program signs) come from tracked commitment records covering tens of thousands of commits across recent recruiting classes. Coaching staff contacts are compiled from athletic-site listings and verified by hand.

How the numbers are derived

Commitment records are joined to our canonical school list by exact name match plus a hand-maintained alias table — never by fuzzy matching. A record that cannot be resolved with certainty is dropped, not guessed: a commit attributed to the wrong school would be worse than a missing one. Sections of a school page that lack enough underlying data are omitted entirely rather than padded. Aggregates (medians by tier and division, state production totals, roster baselines) are computed across the full joined dataset at build time, and page prose interpolates those live values — no statistic on the site is hand-typed.

Refresh cadence

College master data, Massey ratings, NCAA results, and camp listings refresh on a daily automated cycle. Commitment datasets are snapshot-based and refreshed around the major signing windows (roughly November and June); every page that uses them states the classes it covers, so the site never claims more recency than the data has.

What these numbers can and cannot claim

Tier ratings describe team performance over time — not individual recruiting fit. A recruit's actual placement depends on roster needs, timing, position scarcity, and coach preference. Tracked commitments are a large sample, not a census: coverage varies by program and class year, and published counts are minimums. Academic figures are institution-wide medians, not athlete-specific admissions standards. Where our Fit Score personalizes these numbers, it is an estimate built from historical patterns, not a guarantee.

Corrections

See something wrong — a coach who moved on, a program we mislabeled, a number that doesn't match the source? Tell us via the contact page and we'll trace it against the pipeline. Corrections that survive verification land in the next daily rebuild.