<p>A walk-on is someone who was not recruited who "walks on" to open tryouts.</p>
<p>Many times the walk-ons have relatively limited competitive rowing experience (for crew) and so the failure rate is pretty high. It might be lower for other sports, but crew is notorious for cutting and crushing walk-ons.</p>
<p>For men's crew it's about 20-25 - half lightweight and half heavyweight. Last year there were about a hundred walk-ons and only 2 or 3 were left by the end of the season. Here are a couple of articles about last year's freshman walk ons and recruits.</p>
<p>Hi, surely it must be more than that if there are 2 boats each for Heavyweights and Lightweights? Also, does that mean that nearly all of these potential recruits are admitted? thanks</p>
<p>They try to field two boats for heavy and light, but they don't always succeed. There was only one heavyweight 8 boat last year. And no they don't accept all recruits. That's why they depend on walk ons to fill the boats.</p>