Every family is an experiment of one. Your college list should be, too.

That doesn’t mean the process failed. It means the list has surfaced something your family needs to clarify, which is one reason I give you the analysis instead of just 20 school names.

The intake tells me what matters to you. It does not tell me which of those things wins when they collide, because most families have not decided that yet. Your athlete says cost matters and also wants to run at the highest level they can. Those two pull apart, and where they land is your family’s call, not mine.

That is why I write the analysis instead of just sending a list. You can see how I weighed it. If I put a school in the first group and you know your athlete would never go there, the analysis shows you exactly which assumption I got wrong, and that is worth more than a list you agree with. Tell me in Ask Jay. If something is genuinely off, I will make it right and add schools to your list.

But I am going to hold the line at 20 when I can, and that is part of what you are paying me for. An internet search hands you 100 schools. Getting to a lean, defensible number is the hard work. It is the thing I am actually selling.

This is a new offering, and your family is early. If we find kinks, we will work them out. The 20 are where I would start. They are not a verdict.

Both, and it only works because of both.

There are roughly a quarter of a million pieces of information in my database. Athlete PRs. Cost of attendance. Coach emails. Links to every cross country and track page for more than 1,600 schools. Nobody filters that by hand, and anyone telling you they do is not telling you the truth. So yes, I have built software, and yes, it uses AI to narrow the field to the schools that could plausibly work for your athlete.

Then I decide which schools belong in your family’s 20, how they should be grouped, what the analysis should say, and where I would begin. That judgment comes from 25 years in the sport and my experience as a Division I recruiting coordinator.

The software isn’t a shortcut around the judgment. It’s what makes the judgment possible. What you’re getting is someone who sat in the recruiting office making these calls, using tools most people in this industry don’t have. That combination is the product.

Twenty is wide enough to hold real alternatives and narrow enough to actually read. Five feels like a guess. Sixty is the spreadsheet you were trying to escape. Twenty gives your family enough range to compare a reach, a likely fit, and a place your athlete could contribute early, without turning the fall into a research project.

When your completed intake arrives, not when you pay. A Thursday intake is due by Tuesday. A Friday intake is due by Wednesday. If I finish sooner, you get it sooner.

Yes, one time, up to 15 schools, and you choose them all at once.

Once the Clarity System is available, you’ll use the Recruiting Compass to decide which additional School Reports you want. This isn’t the same software I use to build your original 20. Email us your additional schools in one list, and within a couple of days we’ll add them to Your Custom Dashboard under Added by Your Family.

Your dashboard can then hold as many as 35 schools, and you’ll be able to research, filter, and compare the schools you added using the same tools you’ve been using with your original 20. Your original 20 receive my custom analysis. Schools added later do not trigger a second custom analysis.

It does have to be one batch. Not three schools now and four more in October. That is how a small team keeps delivering in three days.

Honestly, you are solidly 12 months away from using this in the way a 2028 family will use it.

The reason to buy now anyway is price. Clarity Custom will almost certainly go to $1,975. I am working hard to make it useful enough to justify that, and I am not planning to go past it. Enroll now and you are in at $1,775, with access through June 30 of your athlete’s senior year.

You’ll also get a head start on understanding how the process works. You can watch the course videos, listen to the coach interviews, and begin learning what will matter when it is time to build the list. I’d be careful about adding schools too early, though. Your family is capped at 35 schools, and using those spots before your athlete’s junior-year times come into focus may not be helpful.

To be clear, Next Mile is not going anywhere. If you would rather wait until after the 2027 track season, that is a completely reasonable decision and I will be here.

Two places, and this makes sense the moment you are inside it.

Your Custom Dashboard is a website. You bookmark it and go to it like any other site. That is where your custom analysis, Your Custom 20, the School Reports, and the filters are.

The Clarity System is a separate site, and also an app on your phone. That is where the course videos, the college coach interviews, and the Ask Jay section live.

So when you have a question, you ask it in Ask Jay inside the Clarity System, not inside your dashboard. I answer there a couple of times each week, through September 15, 2026. I cannot promise open-ended access to me for two years at this price, and I would rather give you a real date than a vague promise. Families who want ongoing one-on-one guidance can enroll in Clarity Advisory. Broken links, access problems, and incorrect NMR information get fixed regardless of the date.

It is new, and the risk is lower than it sounds.

Your dashboard is not self-serve software you are stress-testing on your own. I build it one family at a time, by hand, and I look at it before you do. That is the whole reason I opened Clarity Custom ahead of the Clarity System. The custom version lets me be the last set of eyes on every delivery.

That said, you’ll be among the first families using it. If something doesn’t look right, a link doesn’t go where it should, or a number seems off, email me. I work six days a week. This isn’t something where you’ll report a problem on Monday and wait until the following Monday to hear from me. I want to know about it, and I’ll address it quickly. That hands-on support is part of what you get by enrolling early.

No. Your athlete should own the recruiting relationship, because that relationship is what the coach is actually evaluating. I identify the right contacts, organize the strongest race evidence, and write two personalized starting drafts. Your athlete checks the details, rewrites them in their own voice, and hits send.

We scan all 1,600 schools multiple times a year to keep coaching staffs current. The changes cluster after cross country season, in the winter, again in the summer, and into the fall, so at any given moment we may be a month or two behind on a specific school. In practice you will find this is as accurate as what is posted on the school’s own site. If the school has not announced a change, we do not know about it either.

If NMR made a mistake, we fix it. What is not included is new analysis after your athlete’s times, priorities, or list change. That ongoing interpretation is what Clarity Advisory is for.

Not yet. This version is built for athletes whose primary events are 800m through 3200m, plus cross country. It is not built for sprinters, hurdlers, throwers, or jumpers. If that is your athlete, do not buy this.

No, and here is the honest reason. Your custom analysis, Your Custom 20, and your 20 School Reports are built for your family. Once that work is done and you have the information, there is no way to hand it back. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

What I will do is make it right. We cannot run a business without happy families. If the list misses something important about your athlete, if a report has an error, if the dashboard is not working the way it should, tell us and we will do every reasonable thing to fix it. The one thing we cannot do is make your athlete run faster. Everything else, we want to hear about.

When Clarity Advisory opens this fall, every dollar you invest in Clarity Custom applies toward it. Advisory adds five private calls at the key junctures and ongoing email support from me and my team.