College options for a 4:59 1600 guy?

If you’ve done a reasonable amount of training, running competitively in college is not for you.

I'd pick option 1. Go to the school that best sets you up for a good life. For my background that was a public state school that was division 1. I ran on the school's team but if I wasn't that fast I would have probably joined the club team, which did compete at the NIRCA cross country championships every year, and there are plenty of road races and D3 track meets you can enter.

No matter how fast you are, I say go to the school that will set you up for the best future. The factors are what type of job you can get from your degree, and the cost to get that degree. Running is second.

This is the correct answer.

I ran NIRCA in college and don't regret it one bit. I ended up choosing the school based on financial aid and I graduated debt free. My top options at the time were an NAIA school where I would have been competitive but would have needed to take out large loans and two good state schools where I was too slow to be recruited.

I had some good competitive teammates who could easily have walked on to the D1 team if they had wanted to. They pushed me and helped me grow as a runner. I seriously thought about walking on to the D1 team my freshman year but the coach was in the process of getting fired so I decided to wait for a year. By that time I was enjoying running with the NIRCA team and decided to stay. I wasn't terribly fast, but I had fun, got to compete, improved my times, and my life wasn't controlled by the athletics department.

NIRCA is kind of a joke and pretty sketchy in some ways but is lots of fun. I never thought I'd medal in an XC race after high school but I placed at NIRCA regionals my sophomore and junior years (covid took out my senior season).

In case times are relevant to you here are a few of my HS and college times:
I ran a 4:37 1600 in HS and a 4:15 1500 freshman year of college on not enough sleep and too low of mileage (at the time I was considering stopping running all together).

In HS I never broke 10 in the 3200 but did break 10 in a two mile XC race my senior year.

I ran a 15:27 3 mile in HS XC and a 15:27 5K on a track my sophomore year of college (that was unfortunately my last track season due to injury and covid causing the school to suspend all club teams).
I ran a 16:24 5K at Woodward park in HS. My 8K PR in college was 25:32.
I also ran a couple half marathons in college with a PR of 1:11:57.

My suggestion is to choose the best school and then find people to run with second. Unfortunately your times aren't fast enough to be competitive (though you could see improvement if you continue to train).

Get an academic scholarship and get a degree that will get you a decent career. Run if you want, when you want. I ran all of my best times after I ditched the coaches and did it on my own.

D3, NAIA, low end D2, Ivies

I was a mid-4:20 and mid-9:50 guy in high school, was 17 when I got to college, and ran a 4:08 and 25:52 before October.

There were still 10 guys faster than me.

Gosh I remember many years ago a 10:37 3200m kid walked on at TENN and medalled at Junior Nationals. I wanna say he almost broke 30.xx that day. All he said was his school coach didn't care and he didn't know any better. There are plenty of stories like this. I would try for D3 or NAIA though.

That’s not possible.

Where did you go, OP?

DIII is high school with ashtrays, and the XC team will have a bunch of 35-36m 10K guys at best. The programs exist pretty much because they always have, and they might keep one or two out of trouble.

That said, DIII is what DI was in the 70s, and before everyone was genetically engineered and corporation-assisted to run times that are unreal. You can either be 30 seconds off the back at one mile at NCAA's if you even make it, or finish top 20 at big DIII meets sort of like you did at your home invite in high school.

Go DIII.

zero

kids run that in the 8th grade

Who was that kid?

Have you considered identifying as female?

you set out a false choice. a male running basically a 5 minute mile is a D3 runner, QED. i can think of a ton of D3 where you make the team, no questions asked. that is your sweet spot. most D1/D2/NAIA aren't answering an email from a 5 minute miler. period. you might find a handful of random schools who have a lousy team and would take anyone. but they are probably some of the poorest funded and least competitive schools in their divisions. and my experience those tiny weak programs aren't usually paired with an academic powerhouse. it's like, do you want to go run for portland state. not oregon. not portland. not linfield.

similarly, all things are never equal academically. broadly speaking an athlete with your abilities would find good schools in D3 interested. my experience with much more competitive times than yours was the sort of D2 or NAIA that wanted me was usually inferior academically to the D1 walkons or D3 chances i was considering. period. it's fake to pretend the D3 is a lousy school. if you have good numbers a good student can join the track team with a slow time at elite conferences like NESCAC. no one would equate that to the third rate state schools or underfunded liberal arts schools that offered me money from D2 or NAIA. are we seriously equating a top 100 school opportunity with some podunk NAIA that's mediocre in regional rankings?

to me this appears to be trolling because it's so loaded and backwards of reality. if you started writing area coaches with your time, you will get 99% no or nonresponsive from scholarship teams. D3 will write you back. you could research and find obscure teams who might let you in, but it's basically an excuse to say you ran "D1" and then show up and get clobbered. and those schools are so few that to discuss them in broad brush terms as a choice as opposed to an exception is leading you astray.

where i live 5-flat isn't making the team on any urban or reputable juco. our juco is like D1 without the eligibility problems for weaker students. 5 might get you on some random juco team in the sticks that needs bodies and takes anyone who shows up. but if you have to travel for juco we are no longer talking the cheap route to college. we're talking an apartment when you're likely not a scholarship kid, and either out of state tuition or out of district since you've left your home county. which is probably a fraction of my 4 year tuition, but we're starting to talk monthly apartment rent plus a few hundred per credit hour, plus books, gas, living expenses. juco tends to be cheapest right where you live and juco where i live is like baby D1 quality. it's where the folks who don't want to leave home or can't yet qualify academically for NCAA go for sports.

last, conservatives usually push "cost" in isolation from return on investment, and while selling practicality ignore that if i leave home by a few hundred or thousand miles, it grows me up in a hurry. you have to make your own classes, take care of meals, etc. for all the bs about soft kids my personal experience was i came home from 4 year independent and with my stuff together, and as soon as i was sorted on work moved right back out.....and with an adult's perspective on how my parents ran their place. some of the "focus on cost" stuff to me sounds like people who don't want to leave the crib.

Nice to throw conservative in there. Most of the deadbeats who want their student loans forgiven are liberal. They felt entitled to attend the most expensive college they could get admitted to rather than looking at return on investment.

Walking on to a Community College Team. I am sorry bro 4:59 1600m my tempo 10 milers in college were sometimes around that pace.

The bottom teams a nationals are not taking a 4:59 1600m runner. A couple years back the runner in last place at NCAA D-1 Nationals was a 3:59 miler still.