How your tracker timeline works

Each school gets its own timeline of dated steps: what the steps are, how planned steps work, where the suggestions come from, how notes fit in, and how a timeline ends.

Every school in your College Tracker has its own timeline: the steps you’ve taken with that school, in order, each with its date. A timeline starts at Tracked the moment you track the school, and grows as things happen.

The steps

1. 1Talk: Contacting (emailing the staff), Call (phone or video with a coach), Text (a text or DM), and Questionnaire (you sent their recruiting form; only for schools that have one). Before a first call, read What to ask on a first call.
2. 2Events & visits: Camp, Showcase and Visit. When you add a Visit, choose Official (the school pays) or Unofficial (you pay your way). Each visit gets its own prep checklist.
3. 3Decide: Offer (choose Verbal, Preferred Walk-On or Scholarship, and add a decision deadline if you have one) and Committed.
4. 4Other: Custom step, anything else named in your own words, like Sent highlight video (names you’ve used before come back as quick picks), and Note, for something to remember that isn’t tied to a call or visit.

Steps can repeat: a second email thread, another call, a second visit. Each one is its own step with its own date.

Adding a step

Under each school’s timeline, the Next pills are the steps most worth adding now. Click one, check the date (it defaults to today), and add it. More opens every step in one list: search by name, or pick Talk, Events & visits or Decide on the left (ending a timeline is under Decide; Custom step and Note are at the bottom of the list). You can also open the school and use Add a step on its Timeline tab.

If a school has a recruiting questionnaire you haven’t sent yet, its row shows a Questionnaire badge by the name, and a Questionnaire pill leads the Next pills and opens the form. Both go away once it’s sent. Once a timeline has ended, its questionnaire can’t be opened or selected.

Pick a future date to plan a step ahead, like a visit next month. Planned steps show dashed until their day arrives, then count as done on their own. If a planned step happens early, open the Timeline tab and change its date; a visit keeps its prep checklist when you do.

Suggestions from your coach email

With Gmail connected, the Next pills lead with what your email shows happened, marked with a sparkle: a coach emailed you, or you emailed a coach, suggests Contacting; a calendar invite or Zoom link suggests Call; an invite for a visit, tour or campus suggests a Visit; a camp, clinic or showcase email suggests that step. Each is dated to the email or event, and hovering shows why it’s suggested. A suggestion goes away once you log that step on or after its date. With nothing to suggest, the pills are Contacting and Call.

Changing your timeline

Open a school and go to its Timeline tab to change any step’s date or delete a step. Deleting a step leaves the rest of the timeline as it is; any notes on that step stay on the timeline as notes of their own. Tracked can’t be deleted: every timeline starts there.

When a timeline ends

Committed, School passed and I passed end a timeline. The school stays on your tracker: a committed school turns light green, and one where either side passed is greyed out and moves to the bottom of the list. Anything you’d planned for an ended timeline drops off its row (you can still see and delete it on the Timeline tab). RecruitMax stops reminding you to reconnect with its coaches. If things change, choose Reopen timeline to remove the end step and carry on.

Keep notes on every school

Your notes live on the timeline, right under the step they are about. On a school’s Timeline tab, use the note button beside any step to write a note about it: what a coach said on the call, what stood out on the visit, what you still need to ask. Each note has its own date, and you can edit or delete it where it sits.

For something that isn’t about one call or visit, use Add a note under the timeline (or Note in the step list). It becomes its own row, dated like any step, so the whole story of a school reads top to bottom in one place.