# College preferences & recommendations

Set your college preferences to guide your own search, and learn how to review program recommendations your coach or recruiter sends you.

College preferences and recommendations are two different tools that live near each other in your account. Preferences are a private worksheet for thinking through what you want in a school. Recommendations are specific programs a coach or recruiter suggests directly to you. Neither one automatically searches or filters colleges for you. There's no matching engine running in the background, so treat this as planning, not automation.

## Set your preferences

Open **College Preferences** to fill in what you're looking for:

- **Major(s)**
- **Division(s)**
- **States**
- **Distance from home** — from `0-100 miles` up to `As far away as possible`, or `Same State`
- **Setting** — City, Suburb, Town, or Rural
- **Size** — Small, Medium, or Large
- **Annual out of pocket budget** — in $10,000 bands, up to `$50,000+`
- **School Type** — Public, Private nonprofit, or Private for-profit

The page tells you why it's there: *"Filling this out helps you and your coaches think through what you want out of your college experience."* It's also explicitly private: visible only to you and your recruiter or coaches inside your organization, never to college coaches you email. There's no GPA, test score, or cost-range field here; those live in [College search](/docs/colleges/college-search) as live filters, not saved preferences.

Click **Save** when you're done. A **Print** button generates a clean printable version, handy for a recruiting meeting with your family or coach where you want a paper copy on the table.

Filling this out doesn't change what shows up in College Search or your [target list](/docs/colleges/target-list). It's a reference for you and your coaches to talk through fit, not a filter that runs automatically.

## Review recommendations from your coach

If your organization uses recommendations, your coach or recruiter can suggest a specific program to you from inside their view of your profile. You'll see these on the **Recommendations** page, with a badge in the nav showing how many are waiting on you. Only recommendations that are still pending show up in the list. Once you act on one, it drops off.

Each row shows the program, who recommended it, and an optional note from them (up to 255 characters). A recommendation can also carry up to 3 tags. You have two options:

- **Approve**: adds the program to your [target list](/docs/colleges/target-list) with the suggested status and tags (still subject to your normal target-list limits), and lets your coach know you accepted it.
- **Reject**: declines it. Nothing gets added to your target list.

If you don't see a Recommendations link in your navigation, your account may not have this feature enabled. Check with your coach or program admin.

## What's next

- Turn preferences into action in [Building your target list](/docs/colleges/target-list).
- Organize approved recommendations and other targets with [Tags & prioritization](/docs/colleges/tags-and-prioritization).
- Find programs that match your preferences in [College search & filters](/docs/colleges/college-search).

Source: https://productiverecruit.com/docs/colleges/college-preferences