By GetRecruited
Introduction
There are 87 college women's gymnastics programs in the country. Sixty-two of them — close to seven in ten — compete in Division I. That ratio is unusual. In most college sports, the level you picture first is the smallest slice, and the bulk of the teams sit below it. Gymnastics runs the other way.
That changes how a recruiting search should work. When a sport has a thousand programs, the smart move is to look past the names you already know. Here the field is small enough that you can do the reverse: study nearly all of it, hold the whole thing in your head, and choose from a list you actually understand.
This report walks through all 87 programs the way a family weighs them in practice — where the teams sit, how many seats open in a year, what a degree is worth, what four years actually costs, and how each level spends. It isn't here to push you toward a division. It's here to lay the full picture in front of you so the decision stays yours.
Eighty-seven programs is a list a family can genuinely work through. Build a recruiting plan that ranks them by fit — location, level, cost, and the academics you want — instead of starting from the handful of names you already recognize.
Landscape
A small sport with most of its weight up top.
The 87 programs split across four levels, and the split is steep. Division I carries 62 teams (71% of the sport). Division III is next with 18 (21%). Division II has just 4 (5%), and the NAIA — a separate national association of mostly smaller colleges — has 3 (3%). Not many sports pile up this heavily at the top.
That shape should change how your family reads the smaller levels. D2 and the NAIA aren't a wide backup market here the way they are in basketball or soccer — together they're seven specific programs. If a smaller-college setting appeals to you, you're weighing a named few, not browsing a field. The real range in gymnastics lives inside Division I and Division III, which hold 80 of the 87 teams between them.
The teams follow the colleges. California, New York, and Pennsylvania tie for the lead with 6 programs each, then Michigan and Wisconsin with 5 apiece, and Illinois, Minnesota, and Ohio with 4. The five biggest states hold about a third of the sport (32%).
All told, the 87 programs spread across 39 states and territories — so even though the map leans toward the Northeast and the upper Midwest, there's a team within reach of most of the country. If your family wants to stay within a day's drive of home, set that filter early: in a sport this compact, distance trims the list fast.
Roster size
Six post a score, a handful of spots open a year.
A team competes a short lineup on each event, but the roster behind it runs deeper. The average program lists about 21 gymnasts. That sits a bit higher in Division II (around 27) and Division III (about 23), lands near 20 in Division I, and drops to about 13 in the NAIA.
Roster size isn't the same as a chance to be recruited, though. The number that matters is how many seats actually come open in a given year. Working from a typical four-year turnover, a Division I program frees up roughly 5 spots a year, a D2 program about 7, a D3 program close to 6, and the smaller NAIA squads around 3.
Stack those up and the sport takes in a few hundred new gymnasts each year — roughly 318 across Division I, about 103 across Division III, and far fewer at the other two levels. A roster number on a website is a snapshot, not a guarantee. The thing to ask a coach is which events they'll be graduating the year you'd arrive, because that's where they'll be looking.
| Division | Programs | Avg roster | Open spots, total | Open spots, pr. program |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D1 | 62 | 20.5 | 318/year | 5.1/year |
| D2 | 4 | 26.5 | 27/year | 6.6/year |
| D3 | 18 | 22.9 | 103/year | 5.7/year |
| NAIA | 3 | 13.0 | 10/year | 3.3/year |
| JUCO | 0 | — | — | — |
Roster sizes swing within a single division: at D1, Temple carries 27 gymnasts while Denver and Oklahoma field 15 and 16. A deeper roster isn't automatically more opportunity — only a short lineup competes on each event, so more bodies can mean more competition for those spots. The number worth checking is a specific program's roster against the size of its last recruiting class, by event.
Roster size, by division
| Program | Roster |
|---|---|
| Temple University Eastern College Athletic Conference (Men's Gymnastics) | 27 |
| Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Mid-American Conference | 26 |
| Southern Utah University Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (Men's Water Polo) | 26 |
| University of Georgia Southeastern Conference | 25 |
| Towson University Independent | 25 |
| Cornell University The Ivy League | 25 |
| Brigham Young University Big 12 Conference | 25 |
| Rutgers University-New Brunswick Big Ten Conference | 24 |
| Kent State University at Kent Mid-American Conference | 24 |
| Illinois State University Independent | 23 |
Academics
A degree that earns out shows up at more than one level.
It's tempting to assume the best academics ride with the best gymnastics. The data is kinder than that. Graduation rate — the share of students who finish their degree — averages 75% across Division I programs, with first-year retention (the share who come back for sophomore year) at 88%. Division III isn't far behind, at 62% graduation and 78% retention.
Some of the hardest schools in the country put gymnasts on the floor. The University of Pennsylvania graduates 97% of its students and admits just 5% of applicants. Yale graduates 96% and takes 4%. Stanford graduates 92%, and its graduates earn about $102,887 a few years after college — the highest figure in the sport. These are all Division I programs where the classroom, not the meet, is the draw.
Strong outcomes turn up below D1 too. In Division III, Gustavus Adolphus College graduates 77% of students with graduates earning around $51,546, and Wisconsin-La Crosse graduates 71% with earnings near $49,626. Where the numbers thin out is the NAIA and parts of Division II, where graduation rates run lower — which is exactly why you read each program on its own record, not its level.
Strongest academics, by division
| Program | Acceptance rate | Graduation rate | Median earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Pennsylvania Eastern College Athletic Conference (Men's Gymnastics) | 5% | 97% | $90,555 |
| Yale University The Ivy League | 4% | 96% | $81,765 |
| Stanford University Atlantic Coast Conference | 4% | 92% | $102,887 |
| Brown University Independent | 5% | 96% | $79,131 |
| Cornell University The Ivy League | 9% | 95% | $87,830 |
| University of California-Berkeley Atlantic Coast Conference | 11% | 93% | $74,919 |
| University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Big Ten Conference | 16% | 93% | $73,762 |
| University of California-Los Angeles Big Ten Conference | 9% | 93% | $59,063 |
| United States Air Force Academy Mountain West Conference | 14% | 88% | — |
| William & Mary Eastern College Athletic Conference (Men's Gymnastics) | 34% | 89% | $62,959 |
Cost
Who pays for the gym shapes what you'll pay.
The figure to anchor on is net price — what a family actually pays per year after grants and aid, not the sticker price a college advertises. Across gymnastics, the sharpest divide isn't between divisions. It's between public and private colleges. Public programs average $17,973 a year after aid; private ones average $24,878 — a wider spread than you'll find between any two divisions.
The same split holds inside each level. In Division I, public schools average $18,487 and privates $28,574. Division III runs $14,995 at public colleges against $26,251 at private ones. So a state university — D1 or D3 — usually lands below a private college, and the division label barely moves the number. The lone outlier is the NAIA, where the three programs average just $8,465.
Average net price per year, after grant and scholarship aid
There's a quiet assumption that the cheap option is the lesser one — these programs are the counter-evidence, pairing one of the lowest net prices in their division with a degree that pays off. In Division I, Cal State Sacramento runs about $10,110 a year after aid and the University of Florida $11,936 alongside a 91% graduation rate, both public. In Division III, Wisconsin-La Crosse ($14,712, 71% graduation) and Wisconsin-Eau Claire ($15,151) deliver a solid degree for well under the sport's average. These are the names to look at hard when cost and academics both have to work.
Lowest net price, by division
| Program | Net price | Graduation rate |
|---|---|---|
| California State University-Sacramento Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (Men's Water Polo) | $10,110 | 56% |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Atlantic Coast Conference | $10,154 | 91% |
| University of Washington-Seattle Campus Big Ten Conference | $11,784 | 85% |
| Southern Utah University Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (Men's Water Polo) | $11,840 | 50% |
| University of Florida Southeastern Conference | $11,936 | 91% |
| Ball State University Mid-American Conference | $13,599 | 62% |
| San Jose State University Mountain West Conference | $13,892 | 69% |
| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Big Ten Conference | $13,973 | 85% |
| Northern Illinois University Mid-American Conference | $14,243 | 49% |
| University of California-Los Angeles Big Ten Conference | $14,512 | 93% |
A net price and a graduation rate only mean something next to your own list. Pull the programs that fit your events, your budget, and your academics into one place, and turn the comparison into a recruiting plan with an order for reaching out to coaches.
Resources
Both the aid and travel budgets swell at D1.
Program spending breaks into two buckets: scholarships, and everything else — coaching, travel, equipment, facilities. Division I programs spend the most by a wide margin, averaging about $1.95 million in total, of which roughly $607,000 goes to scholarships and the rest to operations. Division II averages around $456,000, the NAIA about $440,000, and Division III about $178,000 — none of it on athletic scholarships, because D3 awards no athletic aid by rule.
That last detail is worth keeping in view. A Division III gymnast earns her place in the lineup, not a sports scholarship; any aid she gets comes through academic and need-based channels, the same as any other student. That doesn't shrink the opportunity — it changes what the money conversation is about.
Average spending per year, by division
One way to read scholarship spending is per roster spot — a program's athletic aid divided by the gymnasts on it. By that measure Division I sits in its own range, around $29,997 per spot. Division II drops to about $7,286, and the NAIA to roughly $5,812. Division III is zero by rule. It's an average, not what any one gymnast is offered, but it shows how sharply the money piles up at the top.
Average athletic aid per roster spot, by division
These are the heaviest spenders in each division — the programs putting the most into their gymnastics each year. Total spend is the whole operation; the scholarship column shows how much of it reaches gymnasts directly (and at D3, which awards no athletic aid by rule, that column is blank by design). At the D1 top, Oklahoma spends the most overall at about $4.96 million, of which $676,742 is scholarships and roughly $4.29 million is everything else — so even here, scholarships are the smaller line.
The biggest budgets buy meets across the country, deep staffs, and the training rooms that go with them — not more seats on the roster. Use these figures to picture what a level can offer, then weigh each program on the things that shape four years.
Highest total spend, by division
| Program | Total spend | Scholarships |
|---|---|---|
| University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus Southeastern Conference | $4,962,096 | $676,742 |
| Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Southeastern Conference | $4,384,267 | $722,296 |
| Clemson University Atlantic Coast Conference | $4,047,829 | $650,375 |
| The University of Alabama Southeastern Conference | $3,599,108 | $502,315 |
| University of California-Los Angeles Big Ten Conference | $3,517,279 | $546,672 |
| University of Florida Southeastern Conference | $3,516,463 | $769,675 |
| University of Utah Big 12 Conference | $3,461,398 | $642,380 |
| Rutgers University-New Brunswick Big Ten Conference | $3,142,238 | $765,604 |
| Auburn University Southeastern Conference | $3,085,104 | $804,930 |
| University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Big Ten Conference | $2,967,763 | $801,233 |
The lesson for your family isn't to chase the fattest budget. A program spending $4 million and one spending a tenth of that can both be the right home — the number tells you about the setting, not whether you'll thrive in it. Use these figures to picture what a level can offer, then weigh each program on the things that shape four years: events, coaching, academics, and cost.
Conclusion
Most recruiting advice is about shrinking a huge field to something you can manage. Gymnastics hands a family the opposite head start: the field is already small. Eighty-seven programs across 39 states, stacked heavily in Division I but with real depth in Division III and a few specific options beyond.
So a family willing to put in the hours can come to know almost the entire sport — which teams sit where, what they cost, what the degree is worth, and which events each program is recruiting. Sort that field by what your family actually needs, and the division a program plays in becomes the last thing you weigh, not the first.
You can study every team in this sport — so make that count. Build a recruiting plan that ranks the programs by your events, your budget, and the academics you want, with a clear order for reaching out to coaches.
Methodology
Roster sizes and program finances — scholarship spending and operating costs — come from the federal Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) filings every college that offers athletics must submit. Cost, graduation rates, first-year retention, post-college earnings, and admissions figures come from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard and IPEDS. Net price is the average a family pays per year after grants and aid; six-year earnings reflect what graduates typically earn a few years after college.
Estimated open spots are modeled from average roster size and typical four-year turnover, so treat them as a planning guide rather than a guarantee — real openings shift with transfers, injuries, and a coach's needs. Figures are grouped within women's gymnastics by division so the comparisons stay fair across this sport rather than across all of college athletics. This report reflects the most recently available data for each source.
U.S. Department of Education. Athletic participation and program finances, filed annually by every college.
U.S. Department of Education. Cost, graduation, earnings, and admissions data.
Official season records and results for NCAA D1, D2, and D3.
