Rules and regulations involving transfer requests in the NCAA follow. The following link (Adobe Acrobat format) has the document for the 2010/2011 School Year.

Transfer 101 : Basic Information For Divisions I, II, III

Inside that document, the most important contact points are the following : Contact the NCAA Eligibility Center to determine your status - Go to www.eligibilitycenter.org or call 877/262-1492. To answer your question, Page 9 seems to be the critical point.

Written permission-to-contact
Generally, if you are enrolled as a full-time student at an NCAA or National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) four-year school and you want to transfer to a different NCAA school to play, your current school’s athletics director must give written permission-to-contact to the new coach or member of the athletics staff before you or your parents can talk with one of them. That is called having a permission-to-contact letter.

You may write to any NCAA school saying that you are interested in transferring, but the new coach must not discuss transfer opportunities with you unless he or she has received written permission-to-contact from your current school.

If your current school does not give you written permission-to-contact, another school cannot contact you and encourage you to transfer. This does not preclude you from transferring; however, if the new school is in Division I or II, you cannot receive an athletics scholarship until you have attended the new school for one academic year.

Also, if your current school officials deny your request to permit another institution to contact you about transferring, they must tell you in writing that you have a right to appeal the decision. In that instance, a panel of individuals from your current school who are not involved in athletics will conduct a hearing to decide the issue.

Do not talk to another school’s coach until you know the rules about receiving written permission.

When do you not need written permission-to-contact?
In Divisions I and II, if you are transferring from a school that is not a member of the NCAA or NAIA, you do not need written permission-to-contact.

Also, if you are now in Division III, you may issue your own release (called a self-release) to allow another Division III school to contact you about transferring. The self-release applies only to transfer student-athletes from a Division III school to another Division III school.