Number of Sports Played at Top Colleges

The number of NCAA and varsity sports played by each of the highly selective colleges spans a wide range, from 13 sports played by Wellesley College, a women’s only college to Harvard University which plays a total of 40 NCAA and varsity sports, with twenty for women and twenty for men. Colleges like Bowdoin, Brown, Colby, Cornell, Dartmouth, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Williams and Yale play 30 or more NCAA and varsity sports each split between men’s and women’s sports.

Playing the right sport creates opportunities for an applicant to gain an advantage in college admissions as an athlete recruit. Whether a highly selective college is a NCAA Division 1 member that recruits a majority of its sports team, or a highly selective college is a NCAA Division 3 member that builds its teams through admission priority for applicants identified by college coach’s as desired team members, sports advantages applicants in college admissions.

Table of Number of Sports Played by Each Highly Selective College

The table below lists the number NCAA and varsity sports played by each of the highly selective colleges and breaks down the total into men’s and women’s sports. The list also indicates which NCAA Division each of the colleges plays in.

Note: All data is compiled from publicly available information on an individual college's athletic website.

Total Number of Sports Played at Highly Selective Colleges
		Men's	Women's
COLLEGES	Division	Sports	Sports	Total
Amherst College	III	12	13	25
Barnard College (combined with Columbia U)	I	-	15	15
Bates College	III	14	15	29
Boston College	I	13	16	29
Boston University	I	9	12	21
Bowdoin College	III	14	16	30
Brown University	I	14	16	30
California Institute of Technology	III	8	8	16
Carleton College	III	9	9	18
Carnegie Mellon University	III	8	9	17
Claremont McKenna College	III	10	11	21
Colby College	III	15	15	30
Colgate University	I	11	11	22
Colorado College	III	8	8	16
Columbia University (includes Barnard College)	I	13	15	28
Cornell University	I	14	17	31
Dartmouth College	I	15	19	34
Davidson College	I	10	9	19
Duke University	I	12	13	25
Emory University	III	8	9	17
Georgetown University	I	11	13	24
Georgia Institute of Technology	I	8	7	15
Grinnell College	III	9	9	18
Hamilton College	III	13	14	27
Harvard University	I	20	20	40
Harvey Mudd College	III	10	11	21
Haverford College	III	10	11	21
John Hopkins University	III	12	10	22
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	III	16	14	30
Middlebury College	III	14	15	29
Northeastern University	I	7	9	16
Northwestern University	I	9	11	20
New York University	III	11	10	21
Pitzer College	III	10	11	21
Pomona College	III	10	11	21
Princeton University	I	17	16	33
Rice University	I	7	7	14
Stanford University	I	16	18	34
Swarthmore College	III	9	10	19
Tufts University	III	14	14	28
Tulane University	I	7	10	17
University of California Berkeley	I	13	16	29
University of California Los Angeles	I	10	13	23
University of Michigan	I	13	14	27
University of Chicago	III	9	9	18
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill	I	13	14	27
University of Notre Dame	I	12	11	23
University of Pennsylvania	I	14	15	29
University of Southern California	I	9	12	21
University of Virginia	I	12	13	25
Vanderbilt University	I	6	9	15
Vassar College	III	13	14	27
Villanova Universtiy	I	10	12	22
Wake Forest University	I	8	8	16
Washington and Lee University	III	11	10	21
Washington University in St. Louis	III	8	9	17
Wellesley College	III	-	13	13
Wesleyan University	III	14	14	28
Williams College	III	16	16	32
Yale University	I	15	16	31

The Difference between NCAA Division 1 and Division 3 at the Highly Selective Colleges

31 of the highly selective colleges belong in NCAA Division 1 while 30 of them belong in NCAA Division 3. There are no highly selective colleges in Division 2.

The primary differences between Division 1 and Division 3 are:

• the amount of resources that a college allocates to sports, with Division 1 schools allocating the most resources in terms of training, facilities and athletic scholarships.

• the athlete recruitment process between how Division 1 and Division 3 colleges recruit their athletes.

According to the NCAA, there are a total of 350 colleges in Division 1, 306 colleges in Division 2 and 458 colleges in Division 3. With 31 colleges in Division 1 and 29 in Division 3, the highly selective colleges as a group represent only a small part of NCAA and varsity sports, but sports offers great opportunities to academically high performing students to gain priority in admissions to these colleges.

Read The Athlete Recruits’ Advantage in College Admissions

Athletic Scholarships

For those aiming for an athletic scholarship to attend one of these highly selective colleges, they should note that the 8 Ivy League colleges in Division 1 do not offer any type of scholarship, athletic or academic, but they do have very generous financial aid programs for students with need.

Division 3 colleges also do not offer athletic scholarships at all. However most of these colleges do offer financial aid, with the amounts varying by the college’s own resources.

Only 23 of the 31 highly selective colleges in Division 1 offer athletic scholarships as the other eight, like we pointed out earlier, are Ivy League colleges that provide financial aid on a needs based basis only.

It is important to note that funds allocated to athletic scholarships at the 23 highly selective colleges in Division 1 are limited, and scholarships on offer for many recruited athletes may only be partial scholarships. However, an athlete can still apply for financial aid to cover the rest of their college costs if they meet the criteria for need.

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