Scholarship Blending

Here's the rules regarding academic money.
At D1, the money does not count against the program's equivalency if you meet one of the following criteria:
Top 10% of graduating class
3.5 GPA or higher
1200 SAT/ 105 ACT

At D2 the criteria is:
Top 20%
3.5 GPA
1140 SAT/100 ACT

Not only does this apply to academic scholarships, but also to out of state tuiton waivers using academic criteria.
Hope this helps.

rbinaz-
Can you please tell me where I can find that rule? I looked on the NCAA web-site but I am probably just missing it. We had been told that, if son gets any academic money, then gets any athletic money, it all bcomes athletic money and counts against the 11.7.

Ya, any instititional aid gets factored into the scholarship allotment.

I had a long conversation with an NCAA compliance officer at my school regarding this topic and it can be confusing. I have asked other coaches about this and they sometimes have a hard time understanding and explaining it.

I wanted to add one thing based on what I was told.

This blending is great for schools that do not offer that many baseball scholarships because they can awared institutional aid to additional players up to whatever 11.7 scholarships equals.

If a team is fully funded with 11.7 baesball scholarships and the team is maxed out on money or very close, the school cannot award any more institutional aid to you, unless you meet the academic criteria described above of the team runs the risk of going over the equivalency

Here is the one catch. As I was told, scholarship blending only counts with players that are receiving any athletic scholarship money.

If you are not receiving any athletic scholarshipm money, any institutional aid you receive does not count towards the teams "equivalency"

This can make recruiting tricky because you have to balance out scholarship money with institutional money and may not be able to offer a certain player any athletic money because they are getting a lot of institutional money.

This might force some coaches to ask you to walkon for maybe a year, until baseball money free's up or may force coaches to recruit smarter kids who meet the academic criteria and get the institutional money waived and in reality that was why the rule was created, to encourage the recruitement of academically strong athletes, and to prevent other schools from recruiting academically challenged kids and giving them lots of institutional aid.


Dave G
Varsityedge.com

The rule regarding academic money is spelled out in the D1 manual under "Financial Aid".
Specifically, go to section 15.5.3.2.1
http://ncaa.org/library/membership/division_i_manual/2003-04/2003-04_d1_manual.pdf
I've posted this before so do a search if needed.
The D2 info is found in the D2 manual at the same location.

One comment about the use of these academic criteria.
They are, at least in part, designed to prevent schools from developing "Academic scholarships" that have a minimal criteria. There are states, for example, that award academic money to any in state students with a 3.0 GPA. Under the rule, if a student athlete receiving athletic money does not meet the criteria set forth above, this academic money would indeed count against the program's equivalency computation.