Can I run in college with a 3.29 GPA?

Hi,

I am a Junior and I currently have a 3.28 GPA unweighted and 3.41 GPA weighted. I took AP World History and AP Psychology last year and passed the tests with a 3 and a 5 respectively, and this year am taking AP Environmental Science, AP U.S. History, and AP English Language. Unfortunately because I put so much of my effort into getting A’s in my AP classes, my regular classes fall to the wayside and last semester I got C’s in Med Term and Med Lit. (I would drop them if I could but at this point am not allowed to.)

I run Varsity Cross Country, (girls team) and have a 5k PR of 19:37. My DREAM is to run at a D2 college with a scholarship but I don’t know if that’s likely or even possible given my somewhat sketchy GPA… Any thoughts?

Big sports isn’t automatically equal to great academics. Of course you can.

Any suggestions for D2 schools that I can get into and probably run at would be really appreciated! I also would love to hear about any (positive or negative) experiences running collegiately y’all have!

I’d start with finding schools that match your academic interests where your GPA/Test scores are somewhere in the middle 50%. There are all sorts of search tools available.

Next you can start looking at some of the schools from that list that jump out at you - go to their websites and look at recent meet results. You’ll be a good match at any school where you are close to the top 3 or 4 runners currently there.

I think there was another thread here recently about how to convert times from hs to college (different distances) - or maybe somebody else can chime in here.

From there, start emailing coaches. Tell them you are interesting in their school, tell them why you are interested, tell them a little about yourself and your running experience and tell them how they can get a message to you (HS coach, club coach, etc). Also fill out the recruiting questionnaire available on most college websites.

Then keep training and hit the books.