Turns out studying crystal ball picks isn’t the only way to accurately gauge where a football recruit will sign.

University of Iowa Ph.D. candidate Kristina Bigbsy has another method that’s arguably more effective than anything you’ll find on a recruiting website — studying the social media trends of prospects. According to her research, detailed in full by Jacob Bogage of The Washington Post, Bigbsy started her research by studying the social media activity of prospects and came away with very accurate predictions of where they would sign.

Bigbsy found a few data points that matter more than most after studying over 550 prospects from the 2016 recruiting class:

  • If a recruit posts a hashtag of a school, he’s 300 percent more likely to sign with that school.
  • For every coach on a school’s staff a prospect follows, that prospects is 47 percent more likely to sign with that school.
  • If any of those coaches follow the recruit, those odds increase another 40 percent.

It should be noted that social media data wasn’t the only thing Bigbsy researched: school’s location to prospects’ hometowns, academics and recent football success were also factors in her study. Based on her findings, she was able to accurately predict where a prospect signed 70 percent of the time. According to her research, if her assessment was wrong, that predicted school was typically the runner-up choice by the prospect.

Pretty fascinating results for an endeavor that’s largely known to change on a whims notice. According to Bigsby’s research, the main thing you really need to know about your school’s chances to land a prized recruit could be his social media history.