NCSA which stands for Next College Student Athlete is a recruiting services company that is owned by IMG. Yes, the same IMG that you’re thinking of when you hear of IMG Academy, the boarding school well-known for high school sports in Florida. NCSA provides a variety of service from a recruiting portal to connect athletes and coaches, a person recruiting advisor, and sports specific guidance and nutrition advice.

When Do Families Look Into NCSA?

For many families, freshman or sophomore year of high school is often the time that an athlete starts thinking about whether they’d like to perform in college athletics. For families who haven’t gone through the recruiting process, there’s a thousand questions about how to get in front of college coaches and get exposure, to the academic requirements of the NCAA, and now the NIL has added even more questions.

The NCSA Process

NCSA will ask you to create a free recruiting profile which can include your basic information, stats, a highlight video, and transcripts.
Next a Recruiting Advisor will walk through what you can experience in a paid membership with NCSA. Be prepared for these calls as the “Recruiting Advisor” is a salesperson trained to get your family to convert to a paid membership.
If you move forward with a paid membership, your Recruiting Advisor will share ways that they can help college coaches discover and communicate with you through their portal and additional add-ons you can purchase like sport specific coaching or nutritional advice.

What Do People Say About NCSA?

A quick Google search, quickly brings up Reddit threads of users talking about the value they get out of NCSA and their experiences with Recruiting Advisors on these sales calls. The most common pros that users discussed was:

Quick access to information on schools
NCSA may do some messaging/emailing on your behalf

Other Redditors were quick to point out that these are things you can do on your own but you may wish to pay for the convenience. In speaking with college coaches in 2025, they were quick to discount communication from NCSA. When platforms do outreach on a student’s behalf, they don’t see that as a positive. They believe it shows a lack of true enthusiasm in that school. Some D1 coaches go as far as to say they completely ignore communications from platforms like NCSA.

An image from a Reddit post in 2025 about a baseball player and his family having a call with NCSA

A college coach’s post in June of 2025 on Reddit

Do Athletes Have a Positive Experience with NCSA?

Of course, some athletes and their families have a positive experience with NCSA. Families who have no experience with the college recruiting process may find NCSA’s information on the process helpful to navigate questions like how to find information on coach’s, how to email, and receive invites to paid camps to get exposure. Trustpilot has a number of reviews from current and former customers that NCSA has helped. Each year, NCSA says they assist more than 10,000 athletes commit to play in college.

How much Does NCSA Cost?

NCSA does not publicly share how much they charge, however Google searches, reviews, and Reddit comments often share insights into how much the platform charges. One of the most important discoveries you’ll find from these searches are their very strict cancellation policies that often still involve additional charges.

According to online comments, most NCSA memberships end up costing between $1,500 to $6,000+.

How to Know If NCSA Is Right For You?

NCSA has been around for more than 20 years and is a pioneer in recruiting services. They have helped over 100,000 athletes earn the opportunity to play college athletics. In order to determine if NCSA is worth it for you, ask yourself what you’re looking for. Is it:

Exposure to college coaches
Knowledge on the recruiting process
How to communicate with college coaches
Feedback on skill level and appropriate schools

If any of these are things you need help with then you should consider NCSA versus other options on the market. It’s important to note that NCSA will not help your athlete get recruited above their skill level. An athlete who is a fit for D2 will not magically get scholarships to D1 schools thanks to a recruiting service.

Years ago, NCSA helped families essentially learn the recruiting process faster. Today, there are additional platforms available for a fraction of the cost. For example, RecruitReach is an AI platform for high school athletes and their families for less than $100 per year and can help in all of the areas above and much more.

The Final Take

At the end of the day, NCSA is a very pricey option for what they offer. They will follow through on providing you the education to navigate the recruiting process and many recruits say they’ve received an increase in offers to camps. Recruiting profiles can also help increase exposures to small schools and coaches across the country who may not ever have the opportunity to see you in-person.

However for the price, newer platforms offer the education, access to school data, and training for a fraction of the cost.

is ncsa worth it?