before i forget - OP - you should absolutely send a ticket about this ASAP!! and also duece. see below for why
TJ, why do you think humans get more considering credit? its interesting, but i also don't think its true.
this is an interesting exchange, im not 100% sure what to make of it! however, i think we should all consider another known bug which has come up many times (there's at least a dozen threads on it over the last 5 years).
sometimes, human schools get ahead of sim schools, are ahead in scholarship and on WOTS - and then lose! no redshirting, no pulling scholarships, no warning, the guy just signs with the sim.
this has come up too many times to be written off as an HD user misunderstanding - I was pretty confident it was an HD user misunderstanding, but after walking through like 5 guys through the line of questioning, im 100% convinced its a real issue. also because multiple (at least 3 i think) of those guys did go on to send CS a ticket and seble responded that he really didn't know why the player signed with the sim. we asked if sims do more effort on the player later, and seble said no - sims will do effort on a player up front, and then later he added logic to do effort on more players later, to fill the remaining openings - but that the sim will never do anything on a player after the first cycle in which the sim interacts with the player.
i also sent a ticket to seble shortly after one of these, when i was trying to figure out what else we could have missed, what might be causing the above. i asked him about considering credit, the nature of how it was applied, and if it was possible considering credit could ever cause a school to come from behind and win - in general and specifically with respect to sims and humans, which was really what we were discussing. he explained the model sort of and in a follow up agreed that based on the info he provided, there should be no way for considering credit to ever cause the order of schools (leader to non leader) to flip. considering credit is basically applied per cycle (maybe not every cycle), and is a straight % increase on current effort. it doesn't matter when you put that effort in or whatever, its just based on the effort at that point in time.
anyway, i have to think these two cases are related - both relate to sim / human battles, both relate to situations where the battles could reasonably be considered to be close, both result in players signing with schools in violation of both scholarship messages and WOTS. its the only two issues i've ever heard of where the WOTS order doesn't apply - and im pretty confident that WOTS order is as good as gold. i believe in this case, the player was legitimately leaning towards the sim, and something in the decision making process is buggy and resulted in the player signing with the less desirable school. i think the 2 guys with these problems could potentially get BOTH issues cleared up if they send in this info and reference the other problem where the sim is the unexpected winner, knowing the problem goes both ways (if it really does, i could be way off on this one, just a theory) would be hugely valuable from a debugging standpoint.
anyway, ill stop rambling... but i don't think we need to go back and reconsider WOTS and scholarship messages and all that (i've sort of been down that road with the stuff that happened previously). also just to mention im not sure if player one has say 1001 points of effort (after adjusting for prestige) and player 2 has 1000, that player 1 will always win. i think if the difference is enough, its 100% deterministic, but in an almost-tie, maybe its a dice roll?