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NCAA Eligibility Center Using Both Early Academic Certification Standards

Proposal 2011-94 receive most of its attention because of the changes it made to the basic initial eligibility requirements. But included in that proposal was a change to the standards for early academic qualifiers. Early qualifiers are prospects who can be certified after their junior year. The changes look like this:

  • Current standard: 3.000 GPA in 13 core courses and a 1000 SAT or 85 sum ACT.
  • New standard: 3.000 GPA in 14 core courses and a 900 SAT or 75 sum ACT

Like the rest of Proposal 2011-94, that change was scheduled to take place starting Fall 2016. But the effective date for this change was moved up to Fall 2013. As a result, for athletes enrolling in 2013 (winter, spring, or fall), the NCAA Eligibility Center will certify anyone who meets either criteria. That is consistent with many similar NCAA changes, although this one is being chalked up to the difficulty of changing the Eligibility Center software to support two standards for different years.


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