5 College Recruiting Trends in 2025: Lessons from 116+ Athlete Offers

From NIL money to earlier timelines: key trends reshaping NCAA recruitment, based on our biggest cycle yet.

We're still tallying results for our entire student-athlete base, and many journeys are still ongoing — but as of today we've seen 116+ offers (and counting), 22+ Ivy League offers, and >$8M USD offered in scholarship and aid across 15 sports. 52% of our offers this cycle came from US Top 50 universities or Top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges.

Surveying these numbers — and the broader shifts reshaping NCAA athletics — there were some key stories worth paying attention to if you're considering this pathway. Here are our five big takeaways from the 2025 cycle.

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1. NIL Money Has Arrived

Name, Image, andLikeness (NIL) payments twinned with roster cap removals have quite literally made the NCAA professional. Division 1 is increasingly serving as a U23 league of elite sportspeople, where you can get a degree and earn money doing it. The economics have permanently shifted.

What changed: Effective July 1, 2025, schools can distribute up to $20.5 million annually to athletes, replacing traditional scholarship limits with roster limits. Scholarship caps are gone. Athletes must be full-time students progressing toward a degree to receive benefits — but for those who qualify, the financial upside has exploded.

What we saw: One of our female 1500m runners from Sydney earned a full ride plus $15,000 USD per year in NIL money. That's over $460,000 in funding for her college degree, and $60,000 direct to her bank account — this particular athlete turned down interest from multiple Ivy League colleges for good reason. Elsewhere, we saw golfers offered $10-40k USD in NIL money on top of full ride scholarships — sometimes with the requirement to stay all four years of their eligibility.

For international athletes, NIL has been unknown territory due to visa restrictions prohibiting activity on U.S. soil. But creative workarounds are emerging, and the bipartisan NIL for International Collegiate Athletes Act shows promise for 2026. The point is: if you're an elite recruit, don't assume NIL is off the table anymore!

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2. Women's Funding is Booming

Title IX in the USA requires an even distribution of scholarships across men's and women's sports. With colleges now obligated to pay revenue-sharing, many are removing scholarships in certain sports and investing heavily in others. This has created a more varied spread of opportunities — and women's sports are pulling in serious funding, largely because they don’t have the same drain into American Football. 

What changed: New women's sports like rugby, cheer, wrestling, and equestrian are pulling funding from departments. There are massive amounts of scholarship in big sports like Track & Field and Cross Country, which houses over 32,000 female NCAA track athletes. And colleges like University of Colorado and University of Connecticut, flush with football revenue, are now investing heavily in women's sports.

What we saw: Several Crimson women have received full scholarship packages for 2027 enrollment already — while entire new programs (e.g., in women’s rowing) cropped up and checked in for prospects looking for opportunities. Crimson's female athletes averaged more offers per person than men this cycle and the funding environment for female athletes has never been stronger.

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3. Recruiting is Happening Earlier

Especially in ranking-based sports like fencing, golf, and tennis, recruiting is happening much earlier — offers in June-December of sophomore year are common. Why? Coaches are racing to lock down top prospects they can bank on to contribute as the competitive level rises.

What changed: Coaches are offering roster spots as soon as recruitment windows open. In technical sports where objective rankings matter, the timeline has compressed dramatically — partly because top juniors who were previously considering junior tour or professional pathways are now actively looking at the NCAA. At the high end of D1, supply is much greater than demand: more elite athletes are chasing the same number of spots, so coaches are moving faster to secure their picks.

What we saw: Many Ivy League golf rosters are already effectively full for the Class of 2027. The past cycle at Crimson, some Ivy prospects were verbally committed more than 12 months before Regular Decision applications were due. 

The traditional timeline of "start thinking about recruitment in junior year" is increasingly outdated for certain sports. If you're in a technical sport where performance is measurable early, Year 9 or 10 is not too early to start building coach relationships.

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The past cycle at Crimson, some Ivy prospects were verbally committed more than 12 months before Regular Decision applications were due.

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4. The Game Has Changed Sport-by-Sport

With colleges obligated to pay revenue-sharing, many are removing scholarships in certain sports and investing heavily in others. This has created a more varied spread of opportunities — but also more complexity. Not all sports are created equal anymore.

What changed:

• Soccer: More D1 programs recruit transfers. The basic expectation is now to play in-person to gain an offer, and video / email style comms just don’t cut it. 
• Rowing: Ivy rowing is still most popular for internationals, but tons of new scholarships are appearing for D1 women (Title IX).
• Walk-ons: Professionalisation of D1 sport is raising the level across the board. 'Walk-on' and developmental roster spots are less common.
• Highlight reels aren't enough: There are far too many recruits now emailing and pinging coaches for them to take every one seriously. A successful recruit will have a multi-channel strategy for outreach, supplementing digital comms with in-person visits. Social media is becoming a bigger draw factor for recruiters — coaches are engaging with recruits simply by content shared on their profiles.

These are just a few examples; every sport has its own dynamics now.

What we saw: Track & Field led our offers in terms of volume this cycle — a testament to the sport's meritocratic nature, where times and marks speak a universal language. Soccer, swimming, and rowing also demonstrated strong pipelines. But the approach required for each sport is becoming increasingly different, as every college and sport adopts a slightly different approach to a) funding their sports and b) scouting talent, both domestically and abroad. 

Recruits need guidance that is honed to the contours of their sport: the mass-market formula of historical recruiting just doesn’t work any more. 

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5. Ivy League Recruiting is Still Huge

With over 22 Ivy League offers this cycle — across 10+ individual commits navigating multiple offers — this is our largest Ivy haul ever at Crimson.

Why it matters: Ivy programs sit in NCAA Division I and compete at the highest level, but they offer something almost no other D1 conference can match: immunity from the scholarship politics currently roiling college athletics. While much commentary bemoans D1 programmes losing their commitment to academics amid NIL deals and revenue-sharing, the Ivies remain insulated — they don't offer athletic scholarships, so they sidestep the chaos entirely. 

What you get instead is the duality that's always made them attractive: world-class education with global recognition, plus elite-level athletics. (And they still offer need-based financial aid that can cover up to 100% of costs.)

Two interesting examples from our cohort: a Columbia LW Rowing admit and a Harvard Rugby admit both received "soft support" from coaching staff rather than guaranteed roster spots. They didn't receive formal letters. Instead, they received sport bonuses and endorsements that elevated their applications — and the strength of their broader candidacies allowed them to prevail.

The Ivy continuity underscores a lesson we emphasise constantly: athletic recruitment to elite universities isn't just about being good enough athletically. The academic and extracurricular components of your application reduce your risk, and can be the deciding factor when a coach's board is full of equally talented athletes.

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By the Numbers

Crimson Athletics 2025/6 Cycle Results - So Far

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What This Means for You

If you're considering the US college pathway and targeting a quality university, the 2025 cycle offers both encouragement and urgency.

The encouragement: Opportunities are expanding. NIL money is reaching athletes. Women's funding is at historic highs. Coaches are recruiting globally. Soft support pathways are still opening doors at elite academic institutions.

The urgency: Timelines are compressing. Competition is intensifying. The game is increasingly different sport-by-sport. The athletes who succeed are those who start early, build genuine coach relationships, invest in both their athletic and academic development simultaneously — and show up in person when it counts.

We’ll be running some events early in 2026 to discuss a detailed breakdown of our 2025 results and the incredible stories underpinning them.

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‍Ready to explore your own pathway? Talk to our team to discuss where your athletic and academic profile could take you.

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