However, a walk-on player occasionally becomes a noted member of the team.
The reasons athletes choose to pursue the path of a walk-on include: Many schools that do not provide athletic scholarships still recruit student athletes, and these students can get admitted to a school with academic records that are below average for that school.
Additionally, all prospective athletes are required to meet a minimum score on what the league calls the Academic Index (AI), a metric based largely on high school grade-point averages and SAT or ACT scores.
The goal of the AI is to ensure that students who receive athletic admissions slots fall within one standard deviation of the credentials of the student body as a whole.
Even though these students do not receive athletic scholarships and are not required to play to remain in school, they are not walk-ons, because they were recruited.