I don't want to step on Sandon's thread but I started a thread in the youth forum that discusses looking at the available academy stats to evaluate players - https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/da-academy-stats-thread.1981983/ that some might find interesting. Also anyone is interested in how a schools academy players have performed, if you post the players full names and DA academy teams I'll try to post their stats for the past 2 1/2 years along with some any notable achievements (top 5% in something).
Just so we're clear, I don't think of it as MY thread, and I never feel my toes are being stepped on over message board propriety and I always welcome insight and discourse, especially when its backed up intelligently, as your posts usually are... even when I disagree with them. No need to worry about my feelings here.
I'm not sure what you mean by "PDA" but the reason I limited to Develop Academy games is because USSF posts box scores for each of the games in one place so it is easy to quantify the results. It is a lot better to be able to evaluate based on which players are getting minutes and scoring goals than to look to something like TDS 150 to see which kids matured early and were once part of the U17 national team pool or were a U14 regional ODP pool player. Obviously not every quality player chooses to play for a DA team, but many of the better ones do.
It is less about feelings than messing up a thread designed for one purpose (listing the recruiting class information) with a related but possibly different topic. One of the challenges with college soccer is that most people only get to see a small number of players. The new Pac12 allowed me to record games those games. Otherwise, the only games I got were those on fox soccer. Similarly I know very little about the youth players outside my local region, but the stats at list give me some idea of what players around the country are doing. If one school has signed a kid that plays 80% of the minutes and another signed one that is a sub 80% of the time it gives me an idea of where the stronger recruits are actually going.