What do official visit, verbal commitment, transfer portal, and other recruiting terms actually mean?

Campus visits: official vs. unofficial

An official visit is one where the college pays for your child's trip to campus. An unofficial visit is one where your family pays. Your child can take an unlimited number of unofficial visits. Each school may offer your child only one official visit. Before a Division I or II official visit, your child must be registered with the NCAA Eligibility Center, and the school must have copies of their transcripts.

Verbal commitment and the athletics aid agreement

A verbal commitment is when your child agrees — in words, not on paper — to play for a school before any written offer is signed. The NCAA is explicit: that commitment is not binding on your child or the school. Either side can walk away.

An official commitment is different. That is the moment your child signs what the NCAA calls an athletics aid agreement — the written scholarship document used at Division I and II schools. Division III schools do not award athletics scholarships, so this document does not apply there.

Walk-on and preferred walk-on

A walk-on is someone who joins a team without being recruited in the traditional sense and without receiving a scholarship. A preferred walk-on is different in one important way: a coach has told your child they want them on the team and a roster spot is guaranteed — but there is still no scholarship attached.

Contact period and dead period

A contact period is a stretch of time when coaches from an athletics department are allowed to have in-person recruiting contact with your child and your family. A dead period is the opposite: no in-person recruiting contact or evaluations are permitted, on campus or off, and official and unofficial visits to the campus are not allowed either.

Division I uses recruiting calendars to set these periods. Division II follows recruiting reminders. Division III uses neither recruiting calendars nor reminders. The specific dates within each period change by sport and year; the NCAA publishes those in its calendars, and you should check the current calendar for your child's sport directly.

The transfer portal

The transfer portal is the NCAA's central database of student-athletes who plan to transfer. When your child tells their current school they want to leave, the school enters their name in the portal. Being in the portal signals to other programs that your child is available, and it opens the door for coaches at other schools to reach out.

Division III pre-read: what the sources say and don't say

A pre-read is a process at some schools — particularly selective Division III programs — where a coach asks the admissions office to review a recruit's application materials before the student formally applies, to give the family an early sense of admissibility. The NCAA sources used for this page do not define or describe a pre-read. The NESCAC conference statement, which covers eleven Division III liberal arts colleges, explains that coaches act as advocates for recruits but cannot offer or guarantee admission — all admissions decisions come from the admissions office alone. How a pre-read works in practice, and whether a given school offers one, is not addressed in any of these sources. Ask the admissions office at each school directly.