The questions families actually ask us.

A 2.300 core GPA is the Division I full-qualifier line, 2.200 is Division II, and Division III has no NCAA-wide minimum at all — those schools go by their own admissions standards. That number is not your report-card GPA: the NCAA counts only the 16 core courses your high school has on its own approved NCAA list, on a straight 4.0 scale that ignores plus and minus, so a B+ is a 3.000. A 3.4 school GPA and a 2.1 core GPA sit on the same transcript constantly. For the NCAA there is no SAT/ACT requirement — core courses and core GPA determine academic eligibility — but the NAIA is different: 2.300 auto-qualifies, and under that you need two of three among GPA, class rank, and a test score.

Two things decide it: your core GPA and whether you have the right 16 core courses finished on schedule. The GPA lines are 2.30 for D1 and 2.200 for D2, and the subject distribution is fixed — you cannot cover a missing math with an extra history. The part nobody can promise you is course approval, because the Eligibility Center matches your transcript against your own high school's NCAA-approved course list, and a class your school calls Honors English may not be on it. Run the audit first, then check your school's list against what it counted.

Academically they are three different worlds. D1 wants 16 core courses at a 2.30 core GPA, split 4 English, 3 math at Algebra I or higher, 2 natural or physical science, 1 more English/math/science, 2 social science, and 4 additional. D2 wants the same 16 at a 2.200, split 3 English, 2 math, 2 science, 3 more English/math/science, 2 social science, and 4 additional. D3 has no NCAA academic standard at all and no athletic scholarships — each school's own admissions office decides, and at plenty of D3s that bar sits well above 2.30.

There is no single cliff — how far below you land decides whether you can still take aid and practice. In D1, a 2.000-2.299 core GPA makes you an academic redshirt: you can enroll, take athletics aid, and practice in your first academic term, but you cannot compete. In D2, 2.000-2.199 is a partial qualifier — aid and practice, no competition — and in either division, below 2.000 or short of 16 cores makes you a nonqualifier with none of the three. One D1-only rule worth knowing now: ten cores, seven of them in English, math, or science, have to be done before your seventh semester starts, and those grades lock there, so a senior-year retake cannot lift them. Whether a class counts as a core at all depends on your high school's NCAA-approved course list, so check it there before you count on it.

Sophomore year is the normal time, and before junior year starts is the practical deadline, because Division I official visits open August 1 before junior year in most sports. A Profile Page is free, and you upgrade to a Certification Account (which has a fee, with waivers available) once D1 or D2 looks realistic. That upgrade is the part that matters for recruiting: a D1 or D2 program cannot host you on an official visit until your Certification Account is complete with the fee paid or waived and the school has added you to its Institutional Request List. Your final transcript and proof of graduation go in after you graduate.

It's the Division I status for a 2.000-2.299 core GPA with all 16 core courses done, and those courses only count if they're on your high school's NCAA-approved list. You can enroll and receive athletics aid for your first year, and you can practice during your first academic term, but you cannot compete at all that first year. To keep practicing past that first term you have to pass nine semester hours, and after that whether you compete depends on the academic progress you make in college, not on your high school transcript anymore. It is a real path to a real roster, but it costs you a season.

Partial qualifier is the Division II version of the same idea: a 2.000-2.199 core GPA with all 16 core courses gets you aid and practice in year one, but no competition. The line underneath it is the one that actually hurts. Below a 2.000 core GPA, or short of the 16 courses, you are a nonqualifier — no competition, no practice, no athletics aid at all in year one. Nonqualifier is where a junior college year becomes the standard route, and a lot of D2 athletes have taken it.

Yes, and it is the most common recovery path for athletes who don't qualify out of high school. You enroll at a two-year college, do the academic work there, and later transfer in as a qualified transfer rather than as an initial-eligibility case. The credit-hour, GPA, and degree-progress requirements for that transfer are specific and they have changed more than once, so the JUCO's compliance officer is the person who tracks them against your exact course list. Talk to that person in your first semester there, not your last.

Not from the NCAA — Division III sets no national academic eligibility standard whatsoever. What governs is the individual school's admissions standards, and at selective D3s those are far tougher than anything D1 asks of you. D3 also awards no athletic scholarships, though academic and need-based aid is normal and often large. You don't need Eligibility Center certification to play D3, though the free Profile Page is still worth creating.

A 2.300 high school GPA makes you an automatic NAIA qualifier. Below that, the NAIA uses a two-of-three test — GPA, class rank, and test score — and this is the one place a test score still legitimately counts toward eligibility, unlike the NCAA. You register through PlayNAIA instead of the NCAA Eligibility Center, and the current cutoff for each of the three is published there. For an athlete sitting just under the NCAA lines, the NAIA is often the most realistic four-year option on the board.

Usually yes now. Since 2024, undergraduate transfers who leave their old school academically eligible and in good standing are generally immediately eligible, including athletes transferring more than once — the old blanket year-in-residence rule is gone. You still have to enter the Transfer Portal inside your sport's window, and you still have to satisfy your new school's progress-toward-degree requirements, which is where transfers actually get stuck. For four-year to four-year moves, transfer eligibility is your new compliance office's call, not the Eligibility Center's — but if you're coming from a junior college or any non-NCAA school, you do still need Eligibility Center amateurism certification before you can compete in Division I or II.

There's no age limit, but Division I now runs on an age-based clock. Under the model Division I adopted in June 2026, your five-year window starts at your first full-time college enrollment or the academic year after you turn 19, whichever comes first, and you can compete in all five of those years, so redshirts, the old four-season cap and the delayed-enrollment penalty are gone. Current athletes and anyone enrolling in fall 2026 get whichever rules help them more; fall 2027 and later is age-based only. Division II hasn't changed yet: four seasons inside your first 10 full-time semesters, with a similar age-based proposal still pending. NAIA has no age limit either and counts 10 terms of attendance.

Because the two numbers count different courses on different scales. Your school GPA averages everything you took, including PE, band, and electives, and it usually adds weight for honors and AP. Your NCAA core GPA uses only approved core courses in English, math, science, social science, world language, and comparative religion or philosophy, on a flat 4.0 scale where an A is a 4 whether the class was AP or not. Whether a specific class counts comes from your own high school's NCAA-approved course list, not from the course title, so classes families assume are core sometimes are not. A full point of separation is common, and for Division I and Division II the core number is the one that decides eligibility; Division III sets no NCAA academic minimum, so there the school's own admissions standards govern.

Core courses are academic classes in six areas: English, math at Algebra I or higher, natural or physical science, social science, world language, and comparative religion or philosophy. The class also has to appear on your own high school's NCAA-approved course list, which is school-specific, so a course that counts at one school may not count at the school across town. Computer science can count as math, but only where your school got that specific course approved. You need 16 of them for both Division I and Division II.

No. Physical education, weight training, health, driver's ed, yearbook, band, choir, art, drama, culinary, study hall, and teacher aide are not core courses, and neither are most computer applications classes like keyboarding, Microsoft Office, and intro to technology. Remedial math is out too, including Pre-Algebra, consumer math, and business math, because NCAA math has to be Algebra I or higher. Journalism is the one that can go either way: if your school gives it English graduation credit and got it approved, it counts as an English core. Your high school's List of NCAA Courses is what actually settles it, so check yours in the NCAA high school portal, because anything not on that list still earns you a diploma but does nothing to your core GPA.

Sometimes — but only if your high school's weighting is part of your overall GPA and its scale is on file with the NCAA. When it is, the Eligibility Center can add up to one extra quality point for honors, AP, IB, or advanced courses, so an A can count as 5.000; weighting used only for class rank earns nothing, and plus/minus grades never count, so an A- is a flat A. Ask your counselor whether your school's weighted scale is registered in the NCAA High School Portal, because if it isn't, that A in AP Biology is worth the same 4.000 as an A in regular Biology. Either way the Eligibility Center builds its own core-course GPA from your best 16 approved core courses — it never just takes the 4.3 printed on your transcript.

No. The NCAA strips plus and minus off every grade: A is 4.000, B is 3.000, C is 2.000, D is 1.000, F is 0. A B- and a B+ are both worth exactly 3.000 in the core-GPA calculation. Most free GPA calculators score a B+ as 3.3, which hands you a core GPA higher than the real one, and that is the worst direction to be wrong in.

It means the NCAA fills each required subject slot first, then uses your highest remaining core grades to fill whatever is left of the 16. Division I needs 4 English, 3 math, 2 science, 1 more English/math/science, 2 social science, and 4 additional core courses. Core courses past 16 do not count, so a 17th A only helps if it beats a grade already inside the 16. And a bad grade stuck in a required slot, like a D in your third math, cannot be swapped out by an A in an elective core.

16 for both, split differently. Division I: 4 English, 3 math at Algebra I or higher, 2 natural or physical science, 1 additional English/math/science, 2 social science, and 4 additional core. Division II: 3 English, 2 math, 2 science, 3 additional English/math/science, 2 social science, and 4 additional core. Division III has no NCAA-wide core-course or GPA requirement at all, so each school's own admissions standards govern.

Yes. A repeated core course counts once, at the better grade, not the average. Retaking a D in Algebra I and earning a B means the B is what lands in your core GPA. It has to be the same NCAA-approved course, and your school has to report the repeat that way on the transcript. This is one of the fastest honest ways to move a core GPA before senior year.

Sometimes, and the deciding factor is whether that exact course shows up on your high school's List of NCAA Courses. Since August 2024 the Eligibility Center reviews credit recovery against the same standard as everything else: college preparatory, taught at or above your school's regular academic level, covering the same content as the classroom version, so a stripped-down makeup course that skips material still gets rejected. What changed is that the Eligibility Center no longer approves credit recovery providers as separate programs, so asking whether a provider is NCAA approved gets you an answer that means nothing. Ask your counselor to confirm the specific course title is on your school's NCAA list before you enroll, not after you have the credit.

Yes, if the course sits on the NCAA-approved course list of whichever school grants the credit. Since August 1, 2024 the NCAA no longer runs a separate review for online, blended, or credit-recovery courses, so being online is not itself a strike against a course. The catch is whose list it lives on: if the course comes from an outside provider rather than your own high school, it has to appear on that provider's NCAA list under that provider's school code, and providers commonly have the standard version approved but not the credit-recovery version of the same class. Look up the exact course on the approved list before you enroll, because a course your school counts toward graduation is not automatically a course the Eligibility Center counts.

In the NCAA Eligibility Center's High School Portal at web3.ncaa.org/hsportal — search your school by name and city, or by its six-digit NCAA/CEEB code, and open its List of NCAA Courses. That is the current name for it; some counselors still say "the 48-H," but that paper form was retired and the online list is the only version that governs. Check it before you register each year, because a course only counts if it's on your school's approved list for the year you take it, and schools add and drop courses. If a class you're planning isn't on there, your counselor has to submit it to the Eligibility Center for approval — that's the school's job, not yours, and it isn't guaranteed.

It will not count toward your 16 or toward your core GPA, and there is no student-side appeal that changes that. Go to your counselor first: sometimes the course is approved under a different title, and sometimes the school simply never submitted it and still can, though approval is neither guaranteed nor quick. If it cannot be approved, the fix is replacing it with an approved core course in the same subject area. Finding this out junior year is a scheduling problem; finding it out in April of senior year often is not fixable, especially in Division I, where your first 10 core courses lock once senior year begins.

No. NCAA Division I and II initial eligibility no longer uses an SAT/ACT sliding scale. Academic certification is based on required NCAA-approved core courses, core-course GPA, applicable timing rules, graduation, and Eligibility Center review. The lines are 2.30 core GPA across 16 approved core courses for Division I, 2.200 for Division II. A test score cannot make you eligible, and not having one cannot make you ineligible. It still matters enormously for getting admitted and getting money, which is a separate fight from eligibility.

No. NCAA Division I and II initial eligibility no longer uses an SAT/ACT sliding scale. Academic certification is based on required NCAA-approved core courses, core-course GPA, applicable timing rules, graduation, and Eligibility Center review. The scale was eliminated for anyone enrolling on or after August 1, 2023, so any chart pairing a 2.5 GPA with a 900 SAT is outdated, and you will still find those charts on club websites and even in some counselor handouts. What replaced it: D1 full qualifier at 2.30 core GPA, with 2.000 to 2.299 as academic redshirt — aid and practice in the first academic term, no competition. D2 is 2.200 for a full qualifier, with a partial-qualifier band down to 2.000 and nonqualifier status below that.

Yes, and the NAIA is the one place a test score legitimately still counts. A 2.300 overall high school GPA auto-qualifies you through PlayNAIA.org — that's your full transcript GPA, not an NCAA-style core-course GPA, because the NAIA doesn't use an approved core list. Below 2.300 you have to meet two of three: a 2.0 GPA, top half of your graduating class, or an 18 ACT / 970 SAT. If your GPA is sitting in the 2.0s and NAIA schools are recruiting you, sign up for a test — it can be the leg that carries you across.

Because eligibility and admission are two different doors and only one of them is the NCAA's. Clearing 2.30 for Division I gets you cleared to compete; it does not get you admitted, and it does not touch academic scholarship money, which at most D2 and NAIA programs is a bigger share of the package than athletic aid — and at D3, where there is no athletic aid at all, it is the entire package. The NAIA is also the one place a score still counts for eligibility: 2.300 auto-qualifies, and below that you have to hit two of three among GPA, class rank, and test score. Coaches use scores with the admissions office too — a good score makes you cheaper and easier to admit, which makes you more recruitable.

Take a timed practice of each and commit to whichever you score better on — every college that accepts scores accepts both, and none prefers one. One thing that changed recently: ACT science is now optional and no longer counts toward the composite, so the ACT is English, math and reading unless you opt in, and you would only opt in if a specific school or STEM program asks for it. The SAT is digital and adapts to how you are doing, and it gives you more time per question; the ACT still moves faster, especially on English. Do not split your prep across both — pick one after the diagnostic and put every study hour there. For eligibility, no NCAA division requires a test score at all anymore; the NAIA is the one place it still counts, where an 18 ACT or 970 SAT can be one leg of its two-of-three path.

Spring of junior year for the first real sitting, with a retake in the fall of senior year if the score needs work. Know what it is actually for, though: the NCAA dropped test scores from initial eligibility on August 1, 2023, so D1 and D2 come down to core GPA and core courses only — the SAT is for admissions, merit aid, and the NAIA. The NAIA is the exception that matters: under a 2.300 core GPA you qualify on two of three between GPA, class rank, and test score, so a score can be the thing that gets you eligible there. Junior spring also lines up with recruiting, since a score in hand lets a coach walk your file to admissions instead of waiting on you. If you are applying early action or early decision, aim for the October sitting, and check each school's own policy — plenty are still test-optional.

Superscoring is when a college combines your best section scores across multiple test dates into one composite — your best Math from March next to your best Reading and Writing from October. Many colleges superscore the SAT and a growing number superscore the ACT, but it is a school-by-school policy, so check the admissions page for every school on your list rather than assuming. Where a school does superscore, a retake can only help you, because a lower section score is simply ignored.

Usually yes, in practice. Test-optional means admissions will not penalize you for withholding a score, but scores are frequently still required or heavily weighted for merit scholarships, honors college admission, and course placement — and a coach pushing your file through admissions has a much easier job with a number attached. A smaller set of schools are test-blind and will not look at a score at all. The rule of thumb: if your score is at or above the school's middle 50 percent range, send it; if you are well below it, that is when withholding actually makes sense.

Two or three sittings, then stop. Scores usually climb the most between the first and second attempt, flatten on the third, and a fourth is time better spent on your core GPA, which is the thing that actually decides NCAA eligibility. Space attempts at least two months apart with real preparation in between — retaking in back-to-back months without changing your prep just reproduces the same score. There is no NCAA limit and no penalty for retaking.

There is no athletic number — the NCAA removed test scores from Division I and Division II initial eligibility for anyone enrolling on or after August 1, 2023, so no SAT score makes or breaks your certification. What matters is how you compare to the middle 50 percent of admitted students at the specific schools recruiting you, and that runs from roughly 950 at open-admission schools to 1500 and up at academic D3s and the Ivies. The one exception is the NAIA: if your high school GPA is under 2.300, you fall to a two-of-three standard where a 970 SAT counts as one of the three, alongside a 2.0 GPA and top-half class rank. Land inside a school's admitted range and you stop being an admissions problem for your coach; land above it and you start unlocking merit money. Our college matcher pulls the actual admitted SAT ranges from federal data for each school on your list instead of guessing.

They are private high school entrance exams — the SSAT for independent and boarding schools, the HSPT for most Catholic diocesan schools — and they only matter if you are applying to those schools. Neither one factors into NCAA or NAIA eligibility. They still matter for an athlete, because the school you land in shapes your level of competition, your academic support, and which classes sit on that school's own NCAA-approved course list, which is what decides whether a course counts toward the 16 cores. Testing usually runs October through January of 8th grade, and the HSPT is typically a one-time sitting while the SSAT can be retaken, so start preparing late in 7th.

Full-length, timed SAT, ACT, SSAT, and HSPT built on real question banks, plus a 12-question warm-up for when you only have a few minutes. You get a scaled score the second you finish and a question-by-question review of what you missed and why, and your weakest section turns into a six-week study plan with separate in-season and off-season versions. Worth knowing before you start: there is no NCAA SAT/ACT requirement — core courses and core GPA determine academic eligibility — but scores still carry real weight for NAIA's two-of-three path, for admissions, and for scholarship money. Every result feeds your PlayEligible Rating and the profile coaches see. Your first full-length test is free; unlimited testing comes with every plan.

Test yourself, and spread it out. When researchers rated ten common study techniques, only two came out high-utility across subjects and students: practice testing and distributed practice. Highlighting, re-reading and summarising all rated low — which is awkward, because those are the three most students actually do. The practical version is to sit timed questions instead of reviewing notes, and to run four short sessions across a week rather than one long one on Sunday. Re-reading until material feels familiar is the trap: it builds recognition, and the test asks for recall. One thing to keep straight while you plan the hours — there is no NCAA SAT/ACT requirement (core courses and core GPA determine academic eligibility), so SAT work is for admission, scholarship money and the NAIA's two-of-three path, and it should never come out of the time your sixteen core courses need.

Yes — it is one of the better-evidenced findings in learning research. The same total study time spread across days beats the same time massed into one sitting, across hundreds of experiments, and the further away your test is the wider the gaps should be. The reason almost nobody does it is that it feels worse: you forget things between sessions, and having to drag an answer back is exactly what makes it stick. That is what our review scheduler is built on. Every question you answer gets a return date on an expanding ladder — 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 30 days — and a question you got right while guessing does not earn the same gap as one you knew cold. Our method page shows the whole ladder, the studies behind it, and an honest column marking which pieces are in your hands today and which are built and not yet wired up.

No, and this is one of the few places in education research where the answer is that blunt. The claim that matching teaching to a preferred style — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — improves learning has been tested properly, and studies designed to detect that effect do not find it. Preferences are real; teaching to them does not change results. What does change results is what the practice asks of you: producing answers rather than reviewing them, spacing sessions out, mixing problem types, and knowing whether you missed a question because you were careless, because you did not know the concept, or because you ran out of clock. If a prep product asks what kind of learner you are before it asks what you got wrong, it is optimising for how studying feels.

You can contact coaches whenever you want — the calendar only restricts them, not you. For most Division I sports, basketball included, coaches can start calling, texting, and DMing you June 15 after your sophomore year, but several sports run their own dates: football, lacrosse, and softball open September 1 of junior year, baseball August 1 before junior year, and men's ice hockey January 1 of sophomore year. Division II coaches can now call and message you at any time, with no date at all — their June 15 date only governs off-campus in-person contact and official visits. Division III is the same for calls and messages, with in-person off-campus contact after sophomore year, and the NAIA has no restrictions. Before any of those dates coaches can still send camp invites and questionnaires — and they can absolutely already be watching.

Position-specific ability on film first, then whether your size, speed, and grad year fit their roster two years out, then whether you're academically clearable. Coaches recruit needs, not rankings — a very good player at a position they just signed three of gets passed over anyway. Academics get checked earlier than families expect, because no staff spends a scholarship on an athlete who might not certify. The D1 full-qualifier line is a 2.30 core GPA, and coaches know exactly where it sits.

Film is the only one that's actually required. A 3-5 minute reel with your best plays first, your jersey spotlighted, and full-game footage linked underneath does more work than any camp, because a coach can watch it at 11pm without leaving campus. Camps are worth the money when the staff you're targeting is running or attending it — a camp at a school recruiting you is a real evaluation; a generic showcase is mostly revenue. Combines give you verified numbers, which matters a lot in sports where numbers are the first filter, like football and track, and much less everywhere else.

Short, specific, and sent by you — not your parent. Put your grad year, position, and measurables in the subject line, like "2028 LB / 6'1 205 / Ohio." In the body, four sentences: why their program specifically, your key measurables and core GPA, a film link that opens without a login, and your high school or club coach's name and phone number. Attach nothing, and follow up exactly once about two weeks later.

One page: grad year, position, height and weight, verified measurables with the date and where they were tested, high school and club teams with coach contact info, core GPA and course rigor, a film link, and academic honors. Put the film link and the GPA near the top — those two decide whether a coach reads the rest. Leave off anything you can't back up; coaches check, and a stale 40 time or an unverifiable number reads as a red flag. Update the measurables every season.

NIL earnings no longer cost you NCAA eligibility — college athletes have been able to earn from their name, image, and likeness since July 2021, and under the 2025 House settlement schools can now pay athletes directly. What's still prohibited is pay-for-play and using a deal as a recruiting inducement, and larger third-party deals go through a fair-market-value review. High school NIL is a completely separate question, governed by your state's high school association rather than the NCAA. Most states now allow it, but the rules vary a lot and a bad deal can cost you your high school season, so check your state association before signing anything.

Who pays. On an official visit the school covers travel, lodging, meals, and tickets for you and your parents or legal guardians; on an unofficial visit your family pays its own way, though the school can still put you on the pass list for up to three complimentary admissions to a home game. Division I dropped its five-visit cap in 2023, so official visits are unlimited now — one per school, plus a second if that school changes head coaches — but the date they can start still varies by sport and division, so check your sport's calendar. Unofficial visits are unlimited too, and showing up on your own dime at a camp or a game day is how a lot of recruiting actually begins.

No. A verbal commitment binds nobody — you can decommit, and a coach can pull the offer, which happens most often when a staff changes. The binding piece is the written athletics aid agreement you sign; the NCAA retired the National Letter of Intent, so in Division I and Division II that aid agreement is now what commits the school. Check its term before you celebrate — most are written for a single academic year and renewed annually, though schools are allowed to offer multiyear agreements. Division III gives no athletic aid and nothing binding to sign, so a D3 commitment is really just an admissions decision.

There are three versions and they're very different. A preferred walk-on has a roster spot promised with no athletic aid; a recruited walk-on was contacted but isn't guaranteed a spot; an open tryout is exactly what it sounds like, and most tryout walk-ons don't make the roster. Since 2025-26, D1 schools that opted into the House settlement carry hard roster caps that count walk-ons the same as scholarship players, so there are fewer spots than there used to be — ask a program directly whether it has room before you count on one. You still have to be certified through the NCAA Eligibility Center to practice or compete at D1 or D2 even with zero scholarship money, and at D2 a nonqualifier can't practice, compete, or receive athletics aid at all. Contact the position coach and the director of operations in the spring of your senior year, send film, and ask directly what the walk-on path looks like.

If it's junior year and nothing is happening, the problem is usually exposure or level, not talent. Send film directly to 30-50 realistic programs, including D2, D3, and NAIA, where most college athletes actually end up playing — not just the ten schools you dream about. Get your high school or club coach to make three calls for you; one coach-to-coach call is worth more than fifty emails from you. And fix the academic side now, because late offers go to athletes who are clearly eligible, and a 2.30-plus core GPA makes you cheap and safe to recruit.

Yes, and earlier in the process than most families expect. Coaches screen academics before they spend recruiting time, because an athlete who might not certify is a wasted scholarship — D1 requires a 2.30 core GPA to be a full qualifier, D2 requires 2.200, and below 2.000 at D2 you're a nonqualifier who can't practice, compete, or take aid. Timing matters just as much: D1 requires 10 of your 16 core courses finished before your seventh semester, 7 of them in English, math, or science, and those ten grades lock the day senior year starts. Which of your classes even count as core is set by your own high school's NCAA-approved course list, so pull that list before you build the senior schedule.

Expect three things: why their program, what you'd bring to their roster, and how you think about the game. Coaches use the first call to find out whether you actually understand the sport — they'll ask what you see on a specific play or how you'd handle a game situation, and "I just play hard" is a losing answer. Have two real questions ready about the depth chart at your position or how they develop players in your first year. Know your grad year and core GPA cold, and take the call yourself instead of handing it to your parent.

It's free, not a trial, and there's no card at signup. A free account gets you the eligibility verdict for D1, D2 and NAIA, the core-course GPA audit against your 16 cores, Sport IQ Level 1 in every sport we cover (with a taste of the locked levels), and one full-length practice test — D3 is in there too, though D3 has no NCAA-wide GPA minimum, so that read is about the school's own admissions standards. Whether a specific class counts as a core depends on your high school's NCAA-approved course list, so the audit tells you what to confirm instead of pretending to be the final word. Paid plans start at $9.99/mo and add unlimited tests, question-by-question review, saved reports and year-over-year tracking. The line we hold: we never charge you to find out you're off track, only for the report, the plan, and the record that follows you.

No. The eligibility verdict is free: 2.30 core GPA is the D1 full-qualifier line, 2.000 to 2.299 is academic redshirt (aid and practice in the first academic term, no competition), and D2 needs 2.200 with 2.000 to 2.199 as a partial qualifier. D3 has no NCAA-wide academic minimum at all, and the NAIA auto-qualifies at 2.300. One thing we can't decide for you: whether a specific class counts as a core depends on your high school's own NCAA approved-course list, so confirm it there.

Athlete is $9.99/mo, Competitor is $24.99, Elite is $49.99. Annual billing is two months free, so Athlete works out to $99.90 for the year. Athlete covers unlimited practice tests with worked explanations and every Sport IQ level; Competitor adds the full essay review, the resume PDF and season-over-season tracking; Elite turns the NCAA and Middle School reports into living documents — regenerated every marking period, trend history, the coach-ready PDF and a quarterly check-in. You cancel yourself from the billing portal, no call required.

Full length, timed, and instantly scored with section breakdowns. The first one is free with no card; after that unlimited tests come with any plan at $9.99/mo, or a single SAT, ACT, SSAT or HSPT test is $19 one time. Question-by-question review is included with every paid plan and with a one-time test purchase. Worth saying plainly: a test score is not an NCAA eligibility requirement anymore, it matters for admissions, scholarship money, and the NAIA.

Level 1 is free in every sport, no account needed. A free account saves your scores to your profile and counts them toward your rating. Levels 2 and 3 — the film-study rungs — come with any plan, from $9.99/mo, and you play a few of their questions free before you're asked for anything. Your scores stay yours whether you ever pay or not.

Yes — $39 once, no plan and nothing left on file. It's the verified best-16 report: every course scored the way the NCAA scores core courses, the D1 subject splits checked line by line (4 English, 3 math from Algebra I up, 2 science, 1 more English/math/science, 2 social science, 4 additional), and where you stand on the 10 cores that must be finished before the seventh semester, 7 of them in English, math or science, since those ten grades lock the day senior year starts. The one thing we can't settle for you is whether a specific class counts at all — that comes down to your high school's NCAA-approved course list, so we flag the ones worth confirming with your counselor. The Middle School Report is $29. A one-time report is today's snapshot; if you want it regenerated every marking period with the trend tracked, that's Elite — and semester-over-semester tracking on its own comes with Competitor at $24.99/mo.

Cancelling ends the billing, not the account. Courses, grades, core-GPA history, test results and Sport IQ scores all stay put, and anything you already bought outright stays unlocked; the subscription-only features simply switch off. Deleting the data is a separate, deliberate step in Settings under Privacy and data, and it runs on a 30-day grace period so a click made in a bad moment is reversible. Export a full copy first if you want one, because after the 30 days it's gone.

One-time tools get a full refund within 7 days if you haven't used the tool. Memberships get the current month refunded if you haven't opened the member tools. Email hello@playeligible.com from the address on the account and it's handled, no retention script and no phone call.

Profile and Settings, then Manage billing, which opens your own Stripe portal where you cancel, switch plans or change the card yourself. Access runs through the end of the period you already paid for. If the portal won't load for you, email hello@playeligible.com and we'll cancel it manually the same day.

You get a gift code. He enters it in the plan-code field at signup, or from his dashboard if he already has an account, and the plan lands on his account right away. Codes are single-use and carry an expiration date, so don't sit on one for a year. The plan attaches to his login, not yours, which is the point: the work and the history belong to him.

Create your own account with the Parent role, then enter your athlete's PlayEligible account email in the Link your athlete box on your dashboard. The link is instant, and you see the same eligibility status, core-course audit, test results and assignments they see. Use the exact email they signed up with; a school address they never used won't match. Parent accounts are free, and if you want to pay for their plan, buy it as a gift code and let them redeem it.

Two off-the-shelf sizes and one quote. Program is $199/mo for up to 25 athletes and School is $399/mo for up to 60, both with bulk CSV roster import, a risk-sorted roster across every sport, early warnings before report cards, and exportable compliance reports, and every athlete on the roster gets the full athlete toolkit. Above 60 athletes it's a district quote sized to your roster and your funding cycle. We're PO friendly and the spend is typically Title I/IV fundable; email hello@playeligible.com to start it.

Your athlete, you as a linked parent, and the coaches or school staff whose roster your athlete is on — plus a small number of PlayEligible administrators, for support and abuse investigations. Access is enforced at the database row level rather than hidden in the interface, so a request for a record someone is not entitled to comes back empty no matter how it is made. College recruiters never see raw grades or marking-period entries at all; once your athlete grants access, a recruiter sees eligibility standing and the core GPA figure, and nothing underneath it.

You link from the parent side: enter your athlete's PlayEligible account email, either in the parent signup form or on the "Link your athlete" card on your parent dashboard — there's no code for them to generate. For an athlete under 13 it runs the other direction: you create the account, give consent, then link the student. Once linked you see exactly what they see — courses, core-course progress, GPA history, test results, eligibility standing — and if a grade a school entered is wrong you can file a tracked correction from Settings, under Privacy and data. Either side can remove the link at any time.

A coach or athletic director adds athletes to their school's roster, or sends a team code the athlete enters. Roster access is view-only on the academic side: the coach sees eligibility standing, core-course progress, and what the athlete has completed, but the account still belongs to the athlete and the linked parent. You can see every person who has access, and remove any of them, from the athlete's account. Nobody at a school gets access by finding the profile — someone has to be added to a roster.

No. Roster access is scoped to the team a coach actually coaches, so a football coach sees the football roster and nothing else, even inside the same school. Athletic directors and district administrators see across sports because that is their job, and that wider access is written to an audit log. If someone shows up on the access list who should not be there, you can remove them yourself.

When a school or district contracts with us, we act as a school official with a legitimate educational interest under FERPA — student data is used only to run the service, retention and deletion follow the district's instructions, and we will sign the district's own data protection agreement. When a family signs up on their own, FERPA is not the governing law, because FERPA covers schools and their vendors rather than records you keep about yourself. The access rules are identical either way. Districts that need it can also request our Parents' Bill of Rights, written to New York Ed Law 2-d and accepted in other states.

Not his own account. Under 13, a parent creates the account, provides consent, and links the student — that is what COPPA requires, and it is why we ask for date of birth at signup instead of guessing. The under-13 experience is deliberately narrow: grade tracking, course planning, and the Middle School Report, with no public profile, no recruiter visibility, and no marketing email. You can withdraw consent at any time, which stops collection and lets you delete what was already gathered.

What you leave switched on, and nothing more. Eligibility standing is always visible — that is the point of the profile — and everything else is a field-by-field toggle: core GPA number, practice test results, height and weight, school name, film links, Sport IQ results, bio. Your email and phone are never public; a recruiter gets them only after you accept that recruiter. Every profile view is logged with who and when, and you can revoke any access you granted, effective immediately.

Yes — the core GPA number is a toggle in your visibility settings, and switching it off removes the figure from your profile. What you cannot hide is your eligibility standing, meaning whether you are above the D1 full-qualifier line of 2.30, above the D2 line of 2.200, or below both. A profile that will not say that is telling a coach nothing, so we do not let it go dark. Plenty of athletes still building their GPA leave the number off and the standing on.

No. We do not sell, rent, trade, or license student information, we do not use student activity to target ads or build marketing profiles, and our vendors are contractually barred from using the data for their own purposes. Families and schools pay us, and recruiters pay for seats — but a recruiter never sees an athlete who has not chosen to be visible, and you control that field by field from the dashboard, with changes saving the moment you make them. Marketing email goes only to the adult who created the account, only with consent, and you can shut it off from email preferences.

Settings, then Privacy and data, then Export my data — it downloads as one JSON file. It covers every record tied to that account: profile, courses and grades, GPA history, practice tests, Sport IQ, evaluations, resumes and essays, consent records, sign-in history, and which recruiters viewed the profile and when. A parent runs the export from the athlete's own account while signed in to it; there is no separate parent-side export button. Do it before you request deletion — deletion runs after a 30-day grace period, and once it runs the data is gone for good.

Settings, then Privacy and data, then Delete account. That starts a 30-day grace period on purpose — it makes an impulsive click, or one made by someone who should not have been in the account, reversible, and you can cancel any time inside the window. When it ends, deletion cascades through every table holding your records, and backups overwrite within another 30 days. The only thing retained is payment records that tax and chargeback rules require, and the link to a person is stripped off those first.

No. Access follows the roster, not the person — a coach's view comes from their place on the school's staff or roster, so when the school removes them it ends, and nothing travels with them to the next school. The incoming coach sees the same roster the previous one did, and your athlete's records stay with your athlete. Roster access is removed by the school's athletic department, not from your account, so if the departure hasn't been processed yet, ask them to do it. What you can switch off yourself, from the Recruiting tab, is anything you granted directly — share codes and recruiter discovery.