Coronavirus: NCAA will waive ACT and SAT requirements for incoming freshmen ahead of 2020-21
Incoming college athletes won’t have to worry about taking the ACT or SAT to fulfill NCAA admission requirements ahead of the 2020-21 school year.
The NCAA said Friday that it was waiving test score requirements as schools and classes across the country are closed and testing dates are canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The Eligibility Center is navigating the complexity of COVID-19 and its negative impact on our membership, high schools and student-athletes,” NCAA Eligibility Center vice president Felicia Martin said in a statement. “We understand this is an unprecedented situation and a difficult time for students and their parents, and the Eligibility Center is working diligently to ensure the best possible outcome for college-bound student-athletes and our member schools.”
The requirement changes apply to Division I and Division II schools. Incoming freshmen who are set to graduate in the spring and go to a DI school still need to have a grade-point average of 2.3 in the 10 NCAA-applicable core high school courses. If that grade-point requirement is met, a student does not have to have a standardized test score. The GPA requirement is 2.2 for DII enrollees.
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“We are keenly aware of the educational disruptions and academic uncertainty that prospective student-athletes are experiencing,” Martin said. “To that end, the Eligibility Center is committed to providing support and flexibility in application of initial-eligibility requirements as we remain nimble for additional issues we can’t predict or forecast.”
The NCAA is also adjusting the way it calculates GPA regarding pass/fail courses as many schools have simply gone to a pass/fail system because of the coronavirus.
All NCAA spring sports were halted in March as preparations to slow the spread of the virus accelerated. With colleges across the country not hosting any in-person classes and many schools shifting to online classes for the summer, there’s no timeline for when football and other fall sports can begin in 2020.
Thursday, the NCAA announced that coaches can have more virtual meetings with current athletes. Teams are now allowed to have virtual meetings for up to eight hours a week. The previous limit was four hours and that had been upped from two hours when the NCAA first implemented its social distancing rules.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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