Qualifying for Scholarship

[longtex]

I posted this on another thread, but two weeks later, no replies. Maybe it's a non-issue for everybody, but...


Is the bar higher or lower for NC2A athletes than for ordinary students? If it's not the same, why not?

If the schools wanted to change it, how should they go about it?

 

[Horns11]

Interestingly enough, I couldn't find many links on the subject. There were tons about the academic "rigor" (or lack thereof) once the student athlete got in to college, but not many about qualifying for the scholarship out of HS. There was the USA Today expose on Boise State and how every Jr./Sr. on the football team was a "multidisciplinary studies" major, which sounds a lot like the "Youth/Community Studies" major that UT offers to athletes. And we all know the Antoine Wright stories from A&M.

I think most people will tell you that the bar is lower for big-time athletes than it is for the average joe student. I have nothing to substantiate this, but we've all heard stories about the partial qualifiers and kids with 2.5 high school GPAs ending up at good schools instead of community college.

Now, this probably only applies to the "money" sports at a campus. You might get the occasional "future Olympian" in track, swimming, etc., but I doubt a bench player in women's softball had any lower test scores than the average student at that university.

As for your second question, I doubt many schools are interested in changing the bar for athletes. And it probably goes back to money. If you're looking to raise the bar, then you're risking having a worse performance on the field, which directly correllates to student activity fees and student morale/participation. If you're looking to lower the bar, you have to hope that the story never breaks to the public because of the backlash. It's a thin line.

I don't think the NCAA cares about anything other than the minimum requirements it sets for all athletes. That's a HS degree (with credit for 16 core subjects over 4+ years), GPA of 2.0 or better, a "qualifying" score on the SAT/ACT (which is a joke... 820 on math/verbal for the SAT), and certification as an amateur.

 

[tholly]

It happens in different degrees everywhere. A co-worker has a son that plays for an Ivy League (grants but non scholarship) school in baseball. Though the kid was an excellent student and could have qualified for almost any Div1 school, his SAT was a little short of the Princeton requirement. Baseball got him n the door...

 

[hornpharmd]

www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/NCAA/Legislation and Governance/Eligibility and Recruiting/InformationforCollege-BoundStudent-Athletes

Is this the kind of info you are looking for?

I clicked on the 'Eligibility Standards Quick Reference Sheet' and it shows that for Div 1 there is a sliding scale for GPA and test scores. If you look at that you will see that the bar is very low compared to ordinary students. They can be eligible with a GPA as low as 2.0 as long as they have a high enough SAT or ACT score. Similarly they can have a very low SAT or ACT score if their GPA is high enough. Ordinary students at most Div 1 universities simply won't get into schools based on a 2.0 GPA or a 400 SAT score b/c there are too many other students competing for those spots.

As far as to the second part of your question, I have no clue how the schools would go about changing it. I know that most schools would not want to drastically increase their eligibility standards unless the NCAA as a whole increased theirs. The schools would simply be putting themselves at a disadvantage over their rivals who could take lower academic performing athletes.