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He was only 19 at the time because he started college like Normal People do after graduating HS and not as a 21 or 22 yo

Yes, this too! The school needs to meet 'the broken leg test'. If something should happen to your player and they can't play or decide that they don't want to, are they going to be happy at the school. Congratulations to your son.

Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, there was an ACHA M2 conference called the University Hockey League. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Hockey_League IUP's first team and Pitt were mainstays in the UHL, the rest of the membership fluctuated. Both Pitt and IUP were in the WPCHA, which preceded CHE. I believe that just about all of the teams in the area were in the WPCHA/CHE at some point in their history. Around 2006 Pitt and IUP moved up to M1 and the UHL folded. By then, just about everyone in Pittsburgh was either M1 or M3, so it kind of made sense. RMU, W&J, and SRU had jumped to M1 from M3 a few years before that, and WVU, Duquesne, and Mercyhurst had been M1 for years. I haven't followed the ACHA for a while. However, back in the 2000s/2010s, the difference between M1 and M3 was more the level of commitment by the teams to things like game times, amount of practice, length of the season, etc. Maybe you could it professionalism and just generally how the program was run. The M1 teams were/are generally more stable, and had a lot of non-students running the show, while the M3 teams were often at least partially student run. The talent was definitely better on average in PGH M1 teams vs M3. However, there were plenty of good players on M3 teams and Cal circa 2006-09 in particular sticks out in my mind as a team that was better than most of the CHMA.

Club hockey is all over the place. As Saucy said, teams are.much more difficult to make and depending on the school, commitment levels can be very high. I know some very good players that have been cut at some larger school ACHA teams. Sometimes it tough to compete with 21-22 year old freshman with more maturity and experience. My son was contacted by several ACHA teams from M1 to M3, in addition to some Tier II/III Junior scouts. He ended up at Pitt with a very difficult major and decided he didn't want to commit to hockey. Playing Juniors was not an option since playing NCAA was never a goal. He just wanted to get on with life... Can't remember if this has been posted before, but I came across.this article from June about club hockey. Pretty interesting.... https://www.neutralzone.net/mens/2023/06/21/get-to-know-non-ncaa-club-college-hockey/