My daughter has been offered a walk on spot on a D1 gymnastics team. She is not a strong student and has a GPA of 3.28 and only scored an 890 on her SAT. She has not taken ‘hard’ classes in high school but has enough credits to graduate. With the sliding scale used by the NCAA she will likely be declared eligible to compete. Do colleges hold walk on athletes to the same admission standards as they would do for anyone applying to that college? This school likes a 3.4 minimum GPA (with rigorous courses of a pre-college caliber) and a 1050 min. SAT. Will they make exceptions for her as a walk on athlete?
With a walk on athlete, the coach may sometimes give support to the admissions committee, but without it being an actual recruitment, may not have much merit in getting her admitted. The coach will usually tell the athlete if admission support will be given or not. The term “walk on” usually would mean the athlete was admitted on his/her own academic merits. The main concern for the admissions office is will this student athlete survive the academia once admitted. Also if it is the “revenue generating” sports, such as football and basketball, the school may be more lenient with the grades, and unlikely will be given to a niche sport like gymnastics, fencing, etc, unless the athlete was a world champion or close to it.
My daughter was also offered a walk-on position at a D1 gymnastics team. While her test scores and grades were competitive (although not overly so) for the program, the coach got her a pre-read and an early acceptance to the university (she found out she was accepted in fall, while the actual acceptances did not come out until March). The coaches do have some leeway, more so at certain schools. I would have her do some prep and retake the SAT.
@Emsmom1 Seems from your description, your daughter was recruited, since she went through the process. Preread by the admissions liaison, early acceptance with a likely letter equivalent since she was told of the admissions before the actual announcement.
What we did was send a video to the coach along with her grades and test scores. We didn’t know the coach was going to try to get her early admission and my daughter ended up applying ED to another school (also D1 in gymnastics) before she received notification of her acceptance to university 1. So, she wasn’t actually recruited in the sense that the coach sought her out–we did all the reaching out. It sounds like @riven6761 daughter has already been offered a walk-on spot on a D1 team.
Gymnastics is a head count sport, so you might want to check about the rules for being a preferred walk on. I don’t know if gymnastics has rules about it like football does. If so, it may limit other scholarships the student could be eligible for.
If you are a gymnastics walk on, you still have the opportunity to receive outside scholarships. But certainly check with financial aid to be sure you have all the information you need for this particular school.