This article comes from my friend, Rick Allen, who runs Informed Athlete — an advocacy group that helps student athletes navigate the complex rules of the NCAA (https://informedathlete.com/). 

If you are enrolling as freshman student-athlete or a transfer college athlete MAKE SURE to confirm in writing that you have satisfied ALL of the academic requirements to be eligible for competition in your first year of attendance at your new school.

Compliance Staff members who are responsible for certifying athlete eligibility will most likely be focusing more attention on those incoming athletes who have been actively recruited by the coaching staff as scholarship athletes or as “preferred walk-ons.”

It’s important to do this BEFORE you begin full-time enrollment at the university. Every year after classes have started, we are contacted by college student-athletes who have been told that they are NOT academically eligible for competition. By then, it’s too late to consider other options that may have been possible such as taking additional summer courses, postponing your enrollment or returning to junior college for one more semester.