For the unbiased assessment we started with her club coach. We let her know our priorities: 1. Good education 2. Our daughter wanted to play, not sit the bench 3. We were not focused on any particular Division and were completely open to D1, D2, or D3. This took the pressure off the club coach as she did not feel like she needed to push D1 to justify the club costs.
Lacrosse is also a fairly small community so we took advantage of some local high school varsity coaches we know as well as a local college coach we know very well to get their assessment of our daughter based on their observation of her play.
We did the same thing with our daughter, except the club director was useless. You may want to consider taking advantage of the many university "virtual tours" as you can get a great feel of a campus prior to visiting-and it helps to eliminate some chiices. A few other tips: make 2 visits to campus- one during the course of a typical school day to get a feel of the student body and the other on a weekend to see if the campus is quiet or busy. Also consider taking a look at the past 5 years roster and get a feel of whether players return or leave. A revolving door of players is never a good sign. Remember, there is a place for any girl who wants to play at the college level, don't get caught up in the "D1" drama, I know a handful who attended out of state colleges and are now back home because they did not play or because they missed their family at the games. Education should be paramount in the search. Best of luck!
We compared this with the club coaches assessment and they matched.
Maybe not 100% unbiased but it helped.
