The 61 highly selective colleges had a total of more than 37,500 NCAA and varsity athletes in the 2021/2022 season. While about 20,300 of them or 54% of these athletes were men playing 25 sports, 17,100 or 46% of them were women playing 28 sports. The differential of almost 3,000 athletes between men and women is largely explained by two popular sports with very large teams played by men but not women, football and baseball.

On average, athletes represented 8% of the undergraduate student population at the 61 highly selective colleges.

The total number of athletes at each of these colleges vary depending on the aggregate number of sports each of them plays. CalTech, Tulane and Wellesley had fewer than 300 NCAA and varsity athletes playing 17 or fewer sports each while Harvard and Cornell had more than a thousand athletes each with Harvard playing 40 sports and Cornell playing 31 sports.

The top colleges that play more sports, especially in Division 1, offer somewhat more opportunities at athlete recruitment than those that play fewer sports. While many of the top colleges in Division 3 have a large pool of athletes, it is likely that a smaller percentage of their athletes are recruited athletes compared to the top colleges in Division 1.

For the large highly selective colleges with undergraduate enrollments exceeding 15,000 students, NCAA athletes generally represent less than 5% of the total undergraduate student body. At mid-sized colleges, NCAA athletes represent somewhere between 7% and 20% of the total undergraduate enrollment. It is only at the small, mostly liberal arts colleges that NCAA and varsity athletes represent a substantial percentage exceeding 25% of the undergraduate student body.

At Williams College, for example, 42% of the total enrollment of 2,000 students are NCAA athletes. This unusually high percentage of NCAA athletes is due to Williams playing a total of 32 NCAA sports, a number that puts it at the higher end of the range in sports amongst the highly selective colleges. Since sports teams must be of a fixed size plus have substitutes for the team to effectively compete in a sport, a greater percentage of the general student body will be involved in NCAA sports to fill up these teams.

These high percentages of athletes within the student body at many of the small liberal arts colleges does not mean that these athletes were all recruited. Since nearly all liberal arts colleges belong in Division 3, where resources and funding for sports teams are limited relative to the Division 1 teams, it is very likely that a large number of athletes on these teams are “walk on” athletes.

While we have emphasized that playing an NCAA sport can give an applicant a significant advantage in the admissions process, it is important to remember that these sports teams are never made up entirely of athlete recruits or applicants who received priority in admissions because of their sporting activities.

Most of the time, between 20% and 50% or more of the athletes on NCAA teams are made up of “walk on” athletes, these are students who most likely played the sport in high school, but they gained admission without any type of sport related priority. But once these “walk on” athletes are on a team, they too are considered NCAA or varsity athletes.

Table of Total NCAA Athletes and Percent Composition at Highly Selective Colleges

The table below breaks down the number of NCAA athletes at each of the highly selective colleges by gender, and also calculates the percentage of athletes in the undergraduate student body.

Note: All data is compiled from current NCAA rosters published publicly on a college's athletic website and from an individual colleges main website.

Read about:

NCAA Sports Played at the Top Colleges

Athlete Recruitment Opportunities for Varsity Sports at Top Colleges