Note that there is another thread going on right now about recruited athlete admissions at Ivy League schools. In that discussion, there is mention of an averaging criterion based on academic stats to ensure that the recruited athletes are at least mostly within the normal academic range of admits at those schools. Presumably, this is similar to step 1 in the process described above where academic considerations that are higher than the NCAA D1 minimums are used to determine which athletes are recruitable to sign letters of intent.