College visits are where the process gets real. The abstract back-and-forth of emails and recruiting questionnaires turns into an actual campus, an actual coaching staff, actual athletes you might be playing alongside for four years. But families go into visits with very different levels of preparation — and the difference between an official visit and an unofficial visit goes well beyond who pays the bill.
The two types of visits
There are two kinds of campus visits in college recruiting, and the rules governing each are completely different.
An unofficial visit is a campus trip you arrange and pay for yourself. Your family buys the flights or drives, books the hotel, and covers every meal. Unofficial visits are unlimited — you can take as many as you want, to as many schools as you want, at any point in your high school career. The school is allowed to provide one complimentary admission ticket to a campus athletic event. That's it.
An official visit is funded by the school. Under NCAA Division I rules, the school can pay for your transportation to and from campus, your lodging, your meals, and entertainment — including up to three complimentary admissions to campus athletic events. Official visits are capped at five per athlete. Each visit is limited to 48 hours. And before you can take one, you must have a Certification Account with the NCAA Eligibility Center — the school cannot fund a visit for an athlete who hasn't started that process.
| Official Visit | Unofficial Visit |
|---|
| Who pays | The school | Your family |
| Limit | 5 per athlete (DI/DII) | Unlimited |
| Duration | 48 hours maximum | No limit |
| Transportation | School can provide | You pay |
| Lodging | School can provide | You pay |
| Meals | School can provide | You pay |
| Complimentary event tickets | Up to 3 | 1 |
| Eligibility Center required | Yes | No |
| Timing restrictions | Sport-specific | None |
Division II has similar official visit rules. Division III is different: DIII schools may fund transportation for one overnight campus visit, but cannot provide the full suite of official visit expenses. NAIA operates outside NCAA rules entirely.
How to use unofficial visits strategically
Unofficial visits aren't just a fallback for families who haven't been offered an official visit. Used well, they're a screening tool — a way to evaluate whether a program is worth one of your five official visit slots before you spend one.
The typical sequence: an athlete is in contact with a coach, there's mutual interest, and the family visits campus on their own dime before the coach is ready to extend an official visit invitation. Visiting unofficially lets you see the campus, talk to the coaching staff, and get a read on the program's culture without either side making a bigger commitment.
A few things to calibrate your expectations: coaches are in evaluation mode on unofficial visits, not host mode. They may give you a tour. They may sit down for 30 minutes. But they're also managing the rest of their recruiting list, their current roster, and NCAA compliance calendars. An unofficial visit is not the same level of experience as an official visit, and it shouldn't feel like one.
One pattern that comes up repeatedly in recruiting forums: the unofficial visit where the head coach delegates the entire experience to a graduate assistant. One parent described spending nearly $2,000 on flights, hotel, and meals, only to spend five minutes with the head coach before being handed off to a GA. That's not a red flag by itself — GAs play real roles in recruiting — but it becomes meaningful data about where the program actually ranks your athlete on its list.
What to look for on the visit
The visit is an evaluation — not just for the coach, but for your family.
Pay attention to who you're meeting with and for how long. Head coach time matters. If the head coach makes genuine time for your athlete — a real sit-down conversation, not a 90-second hallway hello — that signals real interest. If every interaction is filtered through assistant coaches or recruiting staff, take note.
Ask to talk to current athletes without coaches present. Every program will connect you with student-athletes during a visit; the question is whether those conversations are genuinely unsupervised. Athletes who feel comfortable being candid will tell you things no official presentation ever will — about practice culture, the coaching staff's communication style, and whether teammates have transferred out and why.
Pay attention to the academic side. At most programs, official visit packages include some academic component. If the coaching staff never mentions academics, or doesn't offer any meeting with an advisor or faculty member, that's information.
Questions worth asking directly:
- What does a typical week look like in-season? Out of season?
- How does the coaching staff communicate with athletes about playing time?
- What's the graduation rate for athletes in your sport?
- What percentage of roster spots do you fill through the transfer portal versus high school recruiting?
That last question matters more than it used to. Programs that fill most spots through the transfer portal are less stable recruiting targets for high school athletes — and it's fair to ask directly.
Red flags during a visit
Most visits go fine. But there are patterns worth knowing before you go.
The exploding offer.
You're on your official visit and the coaching staff tells you they need a decision before you leave — or within 24 hours of returning home. This is a pressure tactic. NCAA rules do not require athletes to commit on a specific timeline. Any legitimate program will give you reasonable time to talk with your family and evaluate your options. If you feel pressure to decide before you've visited other schools, that pressure is about the program's needs, not yours.
The parent-focused pitch.
Visits where the coach runs a polished presentation aimed at the parents — facilities, graduation rates, conference rankings — while barely directing conversation toward the athlete are worth noticing. A coach who invests the visit in selling the parents but doesn't ask the athlete much about themselves may be optimizing for closing the commitment decision, not for genuine fit.
Commitment talk before you've seen anything.
If a coaching staff is pushing hard for a verbal commitment before you've toured campus, talked to current athletes, or sat in on any academic sessions, step back. The urgency benefits them, not you.
Being passed to a GA on every official visit interaction.
Graduate assistants are a normal part of recruiting. But an official visit — where the school is spending real money to host your athlete — where the head coach is essentially absent sends a clear message about where this recruit ranks.
The bottom line
Official visits are a significant resource — you only get five, and they're most valuable when you've done the preliminary work. Use unofficial visits to narrow the list and validate interest before committing one. Take notes on every visit. And remember: the visit is not only about whether the coach wants your athlete. It's about whether this is the right place for the next four years. Going in with specific questions ready — about scholarship terms, playing time, coaching stability, and what to ask current athletes privately — makes visits significantly more useful. Our guide on questions to ask before committing covers exactly what those questions are.
Once you have an official visit scheduled, our guide to what to expect on a college official visit covers the day-by-day schedule, questions to ask coaches and players, and red flags to watch for during the experience.
For a full picture of how visits fit into the larger recruiting sequence, the overview of how college recruiting works maps all eight steps from start to commit. If you haven't received any official visit invitations yet, the answer often lives in how you're reaching out to coaches — and learning to read the signals you're getting back will tell you which programs are worth pushing for. When you do have offers on the table, understanding what scholarship packages actually include is the next step in evaluating what you're weighing.