College Walk-On Standards

Faster than that.

sub 4 in the mile or sub 151 open would give you a good shot

sub 405 sub 153 if u cried/begged

sub 5 210 if u donated 100k to the program

im in the know

Talk to the coaches. Your times are not slow. Contrary to what many people on the board think, 1:57 is probably the mean of div I guys as well as 4:25. It may be harder to get on a team by transferring but talk to the coaches early if you want to do that because they are getting their rosters together for the next season.

I walked on Penn State's team in the 90's with a 10:10 2-mile. I mean, I actually ran 10:10 in their time trial, and made the team. So you can definitely walk on a college team, just not necessarily ANY college team.

Don't include splits in relays when you provide PB's unless your relay team was phenomenal. 2.02 isn't bad and you could walk onto all those teams they're not that great of distance schools.

Stanford is obviously very good and you would need to run pretty quick. The Ivies are not very good and you would be one of the better runners on pretty much any team aside from Princeton.

Overall though 1.57 in high school though would allow you to walk onto any team in the country.

To walk on is not hard. To stay on is hard.

A 1:57 in the 800 should allow you to walk on at most DI schools. Especially if you have a good attitude and work ethic. Perhaps at a school like Stanford or Texas you might have a hard time walking on with a 1:57, but at the schools you mentioned I would imagine they'd have room for you.

right, because UL is so good that they don't want 155 guys coming out of hs. Thats crazy. 155 freshman can turn into 148 senior after 4 or 5 years of hard work.

Towson exile wrote:

Talk to the coaches.

This is the best advice. Don't be afraid. Just call up each school and ask. College coaches usually aren't that hard to reach; most answer their own phones (you'll likely end up speaking with an assistant coach). If possible, call between 10:00am-3:00pm Mon-Thurs when they will probably be at their desks.

my advice to you would be to run 70 miles per week all summer and show up for X-C practice in the best shape of your life (endurance wise) and work hard all fall, keeping your mileage up and you will hit major prs in the spring. I went from a 4:26 mile my senior year in high school to a 4:12 mile my freshman year, simply from all the endurance I built up over the fall and winter from higher mileage that I never had in high school. "Speed through strength". I started as a walk-on and had a partial scholarship my sophmore year. And Hey! don't give up on this season. A 156 relay split and 425 1600m, early in the season, suggest to me, that by May, you could be running a 4:19 1600m and a 155 800m....with those credentials, you would be a welcome walkon at most any D1 school and could possibly get some aid at a D2 or NAIA school. Keep working hard this season!

I walked on at a D1 college with pretty much the exact same times. I just called the coach before my campus visit and set a meeting time for while I was there. He gave me a summer training schedule and that's all it took. Freshman year was tough. I was the team captain by my senior year and the top middle distance guy. I had two teammates that were walk-ons that went on to run professionally.

Do yourself a favor, pick the school which best suits your academic needs, and don't go into your first year at any college thinking about transferring. You're only in college for four years -- if you're too busy thinking about how you want to be somewhere else, you're probably going to miss out on quite a bit. If you're at a quality school, you should only think about transferring if you're utterly miserable.

Your times are competitive, so you definitely have a chance of being part of a D1 squad. It's been 20+ years since I was in college, so maybe my advice is obsolete. I was in your shoes with very similar PRs, after I got admitted I asked the coach if I could practice with the team (my HS PRs were 4:30 and 2:00). He said, sure come on out... but it was pretty clear that unless I came in to fall practice capable of running much faster, he wasn't going to provide me any coaching or guidance. I was free, however, to come and run the team workouts with the squad if I wanted to.

So, just don't go into your first season thinking that you'll you'll receive any real coaching from the staff. You're going to have to run much faster to merit their attention.

Darryl, I agree. I don't understand why this kid is already thinking of transferring. Why not just choose the school you intend to graduate from. Makes no sense to me.

ucla and berkley, at least have teams. i have never heard of any runners from uc san diego. I would go to the 1st 2 if you really want to run in college. show up in shape and work hard.

Those times would get you a scholarship to LOADS of D2 schools, just e-mail some coaches, and put your f***ing HS coach and guidance counciler to work.

I can think of at least one very good runner from UC San Diego... and he's a "Beast."

and 'that' is 'a distance program'?

Darryl Beard wrote:

Do yourself a favor, pick the school which best suits your academic needs, and don't go into your first year at any college thinking about transferring.

Seconded. If you go to college with a negative attitude, then you're likely not to get very good grades--in which case, transferring to a better school will be out of the question.

[The following is not a non sequitur. Stay with me.]

In the fourth mile of a cross-country race, you're always going to *act* like you feel good--even if you're dying inside and the acting calls for a real Oscar-quality performance! By acting like you feel good, you'll stay more efficient and use less energy than the "sorry for myself" guys; you'll psych out some of the guys around you; and you literally *will* feel (somewhat) better: physically, because your posture is better aligned than the sagging "look how much I'm hurting" guys; and mentally/competitively, because you're doing something positive instead of just going through the motions, waiting to get close to the finish.

Similarly: If you go to college and embrace the school and the experience, you're much more likely to see positive than negative aspects; much more likely to make good choices of friends and activities; much more likely to be an active and aggressive participant in your courses, getting more from each class and benefiting more from what the instructors have to offer.

In other words, *act* like you're Joe Berkeley (or whatever the school is). You may find that you're pretty happy where you are; and, if you decide that a different school could make you even happier, you'll have the good grades that would make a transfer a much greater possibility.

Thanks for the help, you guys, I'll definitely contact the coaches. I'm okay with not having a lot of coach attention, just an opportunity to run and hopefully prove myself by the time track season rolls around.

I'm not too sure about transferring myself, but Stanford's been my dream and I was waitlisted earlier this month. I am not unhappy to go to any of the other colleges, I'm really looking forward to any of them (likely UCLA at the moment), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking of applying again at the end of my first year. But I'll be wherever I end up because I want to be.

What sounded really interesting above was the summer training schedule - if I contacted the coaches, could they send this to me?

And it sounds like I have a good chance of being able to run for a little while, but staying on the team will be much harder. I have not been successful in XC at all relative to my track times (I have a 3-mile XC PR of 17:36), and though I've been training smarter since and am in much better shape, I can't see myself ever proving anything to the coach until track season. What can I do about that? :/