Rowing at the Top Colleges

Rowing is an NCAA sport for women while it is categorized as a varsity sport for men at the highly selective colleges. Rowing for both men and women provide high school rowers with great opportunities for athlete recruitment to the highly selective colleges.

There are currently about 156 NCAA women’s rowing teams and 84 men’s varsity rowing teams at colleges across the country.

Overall, 22 of the 61 highly selective colleges have men’s varsity rowing teams while 33 of the 61 highly selective colleges have NCAA women’s rowing teams, with a total of 2,222 rowers.

Of the 22 highly selective colleges with men’s rowing teams, 14 of them belong in Division 1 with 636 rowers while 8 of them belong in Division 3 with 266 rowers, totaling 902 rowers.

Of the 33 colleges with women’s rowing teams, 24 of them belong in Division 1 with 1,170 rowers and 9 of them belong in Division 3 with 334 rowers, totaling 1,504 rowers together in the 2021/2022 season. Women’s rowers make up 7% of all female athletes.

The average size of an NCAA women’s rowing team is about 46 women rowers, while the men’s varsity teams have an average size of about 41 rowers. These large team sizes afford many athlete recruitment opportunities to high school rowers aspiring to be athlete recruited to one of the highly selective colleges. These team sizes imply that there could be up to 10 athlete recruits annually for each team for a total of potentially up to 550 rowing athlete recruits annually.

The highly selective colleges in Division 1 will always be active in recruiting high performing high school rowers to their NCAA women’s team or men’s varsity teams. These top rowers can expect to be heavily courted within the rules, and to receive a verbal offer of recruitment by early summer immediately after the end of junior year. Rowers destined for the highly selective Division 3 colleges can expect to be ‘soft” recruited through the normal admissions cycle with a strong letter of support from the rowing coach.

However, it is important to remember that college rowing coaches are also keen to bring on athletes to the team who have no prior rowing experience but who display the physical attributes of upper body strength that are critical for a successful rower. These athletes will typically be ‘walk on” athletes to the team.

Based on US Rowing reports, about half of its membership is made up of junior rowers indicating that there are about 40,000 plus junior rowers in the country today ranging in age from 12 to 19 with more rowers skewed towards the older age groups. It looks like while rowing opens up plentiful athlete recruitment opportunities, there are also many more competitors for those positions assuming they meet academic requirements.

Rowing NCAA Rules and Calendar for Athlete Recruitment

How do top colleges in Division 1 select their athlete recruits?

Athlete Recruitment to a Top NCAA Division 3 College

List of Highly Selective Colleges with Rowing Teams

Below is a list of the top colleges with rowing teams for both men and women and the NCAA Division they belong in.

All data is compiled directly from the colleges’ athletic websites

Rowing at Highly Selective Colleges
		Men's	Women's
	Division	Rowing	Rowing
Barnard College (comb w/ Columbia University)	I	No	Yes
Bates College	III	Yes	Yes
Boston College	I	No	Yes
Boston University	I	Yes	Yes
Bowdoin College	III	No	No
Brown University	I	Yes	Yes
California Institute of Technology	III	No	No
Carleton College	III	No	No
Carnegie Mellon University	III	No	No
Claremont McKenna College (incl Harvey Mudd)	III	No	No
Colby College	III	Yes	Yes
Colgate University	I	Yes	Yes
Columbia University (incl Barnard College)	I	Yes	Yes
Cornell University	I	Yes	Yes
Dartmouth College	I	Yes	Yes
Davidson College	I	No	No
Duke University	I	No	Yes
Emory University	III	No	No
Georgetown University	I	Yes	Yes
Georgia Institute of Technology	I	No	No
Grinnell College	III	No	No
Hamilton College	III	Yes	Yes
Harvard University	I	Yes	Yes
Harvey Mudd College (comb w/Claremont McKenna)	III	No	No
Haverford College	III	No	No
John Hopkins University	III	No	No
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	III	Yes	Yes
Middleburry College	III	No	No
Northeastern University	I	Yes	Yes
Northwestern University	I	No	No
New York University	III	No	No
Pitzer College	III	No	No
Pomona College	III	No	No
Princeton University	I	Yes	Yes
Rice University	I	No	No
Stanford University	I	Yes	Yes
Swarthmore College	III	No	No
Tufts University	III	Yes	Yes
Tulane University	I	No	No
University of California Berkeley	I	Yes	Yes
University of California Los Angeles	I	No	Yes
University of Michigan	I	No	Yes
University of Chicago	III	No	No
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill	I	No	Yes
University of Notre Dame	I	No	Yes
University of Pennsylvania	I	Yes	Yes
University of Southern California	I	No	Yes
University of Virginia	I	No	Yes
Vanderbilt University	I	No	No
Vassar College	III	Yes	Yes
Villanova University	I	No	Yes
Washington and Lee University	III	No	No
Washington University in St. Louis	III	No	No
Wellesley College	III	No	Yes
Wesleyan University	III	Yes	Yes
Williams College	III	Yes	Yes
Yale University	I	Yes	Yes
Total Rowers		902	1,504