Is there any advantage between them? I have read that some folks who are "contending" lean toward drafting guys from College but are college drafted players any more ready or potentially polished in this game vs real life?

I am also making the assumption that as franchise's get better and assume higher payrolls teams are shifting from rebuilding to contender you have to make a decision where you want to focus and that most teams max out 2 of the 3 areas of scouting (IFA, HS, COL) due to the 185m cap.

The reason I am asking is I am in the second season of a rebuild and would prefer to make the best choice now and start heading in 1 particular scouting direction rather than getting caught in the middle later on next season or the season after when having 4m extra in payroll will have a bigger benefit than having a total of 4m in any one of the HS/COL/IFA areas.

Also if it makes any difference my world has a hard prospect cap of 25m.

Thanks

As a general rule, I went opposite of the world. If most had HS, I went college. But, now that we can't see the other teams' budgets, it's a lost strategy.

Anyway, if you're joining a world and you need players faster, college.
If you have a solid base, high school.
If you have a low payroll and low draft pick, IFA.

Adjust as your situation changes with IFA. But you're pretty much locked in on the other two once you start down that path.

I like HS because I trust my development strategy and I'm guessing a lot of teams don't want to wait 5 years for a player to be ready. (I base that off of nothing but intuition). IFA in my world before the new update was like entering a 32 person mosh pit, now, after the update it's like entering a 32 person mosh pit blindfolded. I avoid spending any 'real' money on IFA (side note. Sometimes if I have extra cash it's fun to buy a 'lottery ticket'. Spend between 500k and 5 mill on IFA's that look good and hope you strike it rich).

Like mike said, pick 1 or 2 of the three and crank the scouting to 16 to 20 million.

I have run 20/0 with both COL and HS as the 20. By far the biggest difference-- and it's huge in numbers but not that huge in impact-- is that COL players are more signable. I prefer COL for that reason, but in the world in which I'm committed to HS it's absolutely not worth changing.