Do high-profile sports like football and basketball have walk-ons too?
Walters: They do, although you find more of them in sports like track, water polo, volleyball, and crew. Bowen: One of the admission people we interviewed commented that rowing is the last of the really amateur sports because so few secondary schools offer rowing. Most people who end up rowing in college are spotted by team members in freshman registration lines. Orleans: My impression is that there are two kinds of walk-ons in the Ivies. One group are kids who try a new sport in college – sports like fencing, rowing, and sometimes squash. Then there are the kids who played a sport in high school but weren’t recruited to play in college, but show up at practice anyway. Chances are they aren’t going to start on a team, but they still have a reasonable chance of making it and having a good experience. Gary’s numbers bear this out. Walters: I’d like to get back to the matter of student numbers. Through most of the 1980s, anywhere from 21 to 23 percent of the students admitted to Princeton
