The “cutoff” that NU’s admissions office uses is being in the top half of a graduating class, which is incredibly dumb because (I) many high schools don’t even report that information and (II) there are a litany of factors that go into class rank that have exactly no bearing on a player’s ability to graduate from NU.
Because you danced around it so often, here’s the “baseline” criteria that NU’s admission office looked for back in the day:
- >3.0 core unweighted GPA
- >1000 SAT or >20 ACT
- Top half of HS class, if reported
Like I said before, not exactly “difficult” criteria but a whole heck of a lot higher than the NCAA minimums; there used to be a sliding scale of eligibility based on GPA and test score for NCAA eligibility that was laughably low, which has been scrapped in favor of >16 core courses with a >2.3 GPA with no standardized test requirement (which is also pretty laughably low, especially considering special treatment that prospective D1 athletes typically receive in high school).
Winning on the field while achieving academically and graduating our players is the goal, not some kind of lofty admission requirement that nobody outside of a small portion of the NU fan base even knows about.
Frankly, I could give two ***** how a kid performed academically in high school so long as he graduates from NU. And, even more frankly, it’s a whole helluva lot more difficult to get into NU than it is to graduate (especially with the special treatment and resources available to athletes).
To that end, the whole debate is this: NU has achieved extremely good academic success on the team with admission requirements well below that of the general population, so how much lower could those go assuming academic performance remains adequate and how much can/could that help us be more competitive on the field?
In my opinion I think NU’s coaches should have the latitude to operate within the NCAA framework so long as team academic performance remains amongst the best in the country.
