Decoding NCAA Gymnastics: Understanding the National Qualifying Score (NQS)

College gymnastics is rapidly gaining popularity, attracting a broader audience thanks to increased media coverage and the rise of high-profile gymnasts. To fully appreciate the sport, it's essential to understand its unique scoring and ranking system. This article breaks down the National Qualifying Score (NQS), a critical component in determining team rankings and postseason qualifications in NCAA women's gymnastics.

What is NQS?

National Qualifying Score, or NQS, is a ranking formula that determines which 36 teams will advance to NCAA regionals. Additionally, NQS determines individual and event-specific ranks. NQS is how college gymnastics determines their hierarchy as the season winds down and preparation toward crowning a National Champion takes place.

A Shift in the Formula

The NQS formula has undergone changes to better reflect a team's overall performance throughout the season. In the past, it was called Regional Qualifying Score (RQS). The updated NQS formula aims to simplify the process and ensure that every meet matters.

How NQS is Calculated

The NQS is calculated using a team’s top six scores from their meets during the season, where at least three must be from away meets. NQS is determined by taking a team’s top six scores-where at least three must be from away meets-dropping the highest score and averaging the remaining five. This is done in an effort to eliminate home bias for a team.

The Updated Formula

NQS used to be pretty terrible. It required weird math, it was hard to explain, and it only counted about half to two-thirds of a team’s season. This season, the formula is simple for most teams. The old formula counted a team’s top three home meets and top three meets from every other place. It then dropped the highest score and averaged the remaining five scores. That formula will remain for qualifying individuals to regionals, but for the teams, NQS is now the Olympic average of a team’s entire season. For those unaware, an Olympic average removes the highest and lowest numbers in a set and averages the middle. This is how routines are scored in the NCAA postseason.

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This means that every meet matters because a score will either raise or lower a team’s NQS. It also means that teams have to do well throughout the entire season and not just the last six meets. In 2025, the last two teams to snag a bid into regionals had worse averages than teams ranked 10 spots below them. Under the new NQS formula, that won’t happen.

Home vs. Away Meets

To prevent home-field advantage from skewing the rankings, the NQS calculation considers the location of the meets. Three of those six scores need to be road or neutral-site scores in an effort to eliminate home bias for a team. A maximum of five scores from home meets may be counted; if a team competes in more than five home meets, then the five lowest scores will be retained, with all higher home scores being dropped. In addition, the scores from at least five away meets must be counted toward the minimum of nine.

Starting in the season, teams are only allowed to count one meet at a neutral site within 30 miles of campus as a road meet. Any additional meets within said radius count as home meets. The new NQS formula factors in every meet a team competes, with the exception of extra home meets, dropping the high and low scores. This means every away meet will be factored in as well as the team’s five lowest home scores. The new formula is not expected to hurt teams that compete less as long as they compete in the minimum required five away meets and at least nine total meets.

Neutral Site Meets

To try and avoid any shenanigans, the competition committee passed a rule regarding neutral site meets.

Starting in the 2026 season, teams are only allowed to count one meet at a neutral site within 30 miles of campus as a road meet. Any additional meets within said radius count as home meets. This rule does not apply to conference championships. It hurts Utah more than any other team since they compete at the nearby Maverik Center regularly. In fact, they’ll be the first team that has to count a neutral site meet as a home meet thanks to the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation worrying about a hypothetical Saints playoff game.

Read also: Your Guide to NCAA Gymnastics

Impact of the New Formula

Using the updated NQS formula on 2025 scores would have shuffled several teams within the top 36 regionals cutoff. The most notable shifts include Oklahoma moving up to No. 1 over LSU, Stanford jumping three spots into the top 10, Ohio State climbing four spots to No. 21, and George Washington soaring seven spots to No.

Postseason Implications

The top 36 teams based on NQS qualify to regionals. The top 16 are seeded while No. 17-36 are placed geographically. For placement, teams ranked Nos. 1/8/9/16 are seeded into one regional, Nos. 2/7/10/15 are in another, Nos. 3/6/11/14 in the third and Nos. 4/5/12/13 in the final regional.

Regional Competition

Regionals is a four day competition, including one rest day. Day one features a dual meet between the two “play-in” teams with the winner advancing to compete in the second session on day two. In each of the two day two sessions, the top two teams will advance to the regional final on where the top two teams from that quad meet advance to NCAA semifinals in two weeks’ time.

In 2023, the NCAA split the four regional sites into separate Wednesday/Thursday/Saturday and Thursday/Friday/Sunday competition schedules. The top 12 all arounders and top 16 individual event specialists on each event, who are not on a top 28 qualifying team, make it to regionals. Individuals from teams competing in round one are included in the list of individual qualifiers in case their team doesn’t advance out of round one. No alternates are named for regionals or nationals for individual qualifiers. These individuals are placed at a regional competition geographically.

To determine the session in which they compete, the NCAA outlined the following, confusing, parameters: “To ensure the top-seeded teams have the least number of individuals competing with them, the committee will pair the highest-ranked all-arounder at the site with the lowest-seeded team (or lowest NQS team at the site first, then proceed to the seeded teams), the next highest all-arounder with the next lowest-seeded team, etc.

NCAA Championships

The NCAA national championships have been held in Fort Worth, Texas since 2019 and are scheduled to be there through at least 2026 in an effort to establish a long term site similar to the College World Series in Omaha for baseball or in Oklahoma City for softball. At nationals, all individuals will compete on Friday in one of the two semifinal sessions. No alternates will be named for regionals for individual qualifiers. Two teams compete in round one on Wednesday or Thursday while the remaining seven get a round-one bye and automatically advance to round two.

Team ties during the national semifinals will be broken the same way as in round one, two and three (see above). Teams with an NQS greater than 188.000 will qualify for the team semifinals. Session placement is based on final rankings following conference championship weekend: Teams ranked Nos. 1, 4, 5 and 8 are placed in one session, while teams ranked Nos. 2, 3, 6 and 7 are placed in the other.

Individual Qualification

Because only eight teams advance to nationals, a lot of outstanding individuals are left behind. This is remedied with an individual qualification process, which is a bit more complicated. All individual competitors compete and qualify for nationals out of the two round two sessions at regionals. Results are combined over the two sessions to determine the top finisher not on a qualifying team in the all-around and on each event.

Additional Factors Influencing NQS and Postseason

Several other factors can influence a team's NQS and their chances in the postseason.

Conference Championships

Officially, the NCAA postseason begins the day after the conference championships and includes regional and national competitions. There are 13 conferences in collegiate gymnastics across the three divisions. The Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC are considered the “Big 4” conferences, similar to Power 5 conferences in football.

Doing well in the regular season gives teams a postseason advantage. In the SEC, the teams with the top NQS in each session of the championship get first choice of which event they’d like to start on, but the NCAA was all about making it random. Those days are over. Starting with the 2026 tournament, the top team by NQS in each meet gets first choice of which event they want to start on. After that, the team with the second-best NQS gets their choice of the remaining events, and the next team gets to choose between the remaining two events.

Regular Season Champions

The concept of a regular season champion is relatively new to the sport of gymnastics and the way it is determined varies conference to conference. In 2022 that changed again, and the conference now uses in-conference win-loss record to seed the championship.

Religious Exemptions

Any team requiring a religious exemption will be placed in a regional site not competing on the day that exemption is observed, either Saturday or Sunday.

Changes in Teams and Coaches

The landscape of college gymnastics is ever-changing, with teams and coaches constantly evolving.

Coaching Changes

The biggest announcement that happened during 2025 nationals came on the off day when Clemson announced it had fired coach Amy Smith. Clemson decided they wanted their next hire to be much better, so they went and bought out the contracts of Cal co-head coaches Justin and Liz Crandall-Howell. This move triggered a series of transfers and commitment flips, one of which saw Molly Brinkman commit to LSU for this season, that has left Cal in a full-scale rebuild.

Major Transfers

As was to be expected, the offseason saw several big-name transfers. The biggest transfer of all was eMjae Frazier, Cal’s superstar all-arounder who graduated early to spend her final season at Florida. Ella Cesario, another Cal superstar, moved with her coaches to Clemson. Arkansas landed two former five-star recruits out of the portal. Missouri continued their trend of finding diamonds in the portal by bringing in two grad transfers, Illinois grad Makayla Green and Illinois State grad Sarah Wabi, and one gymnast with two years remaining, former Arkansas gymnast Dakota Essenpries.

Scoring System Nuances

Judging and Deductions

For regionals, four judges will judge each event during the competition with the highest and lowest scores thrown out and the middle two averaged for the final score. For nationals, six judges will judge each event. The highest and lowest score will be dropped and the four scores in the middle will be averaged. Common deductions include uncontrolled landings, missed handstands and falls.

Lineup Strategy

Coaches must submit all lineups prior to the start of the rotation. Because scores tend to rise as the rotation progresses, coaches want a consistent and reliably high-scoring gymnast in the lead-off position to set a confident tone for the rest of the lineup and provide a strong starting score for the judges to build upon. Typically the gymnast with the highest scoring potential anchors the lineup.

All-American Status and Awards

After the conclusion of the regular season, which includes conference meets but ends before regionals, regular season All-Americans are determined using NQS rankings. The honor is determined by taking the top eight on each event and the all around for the First Team and Nos. All-American status is determined by taking the top four, with ties, on each event and the all around from each session at the NCAA national championships for the first team and Nos.

The Academic All-District team is selected by members of CoSIDA, the College Sports Information Directors of America. The Elite 90 award goes to the student-athlete who has the highest cumulative grade-point average of all student-athletes on all teams competing at the NCAA national championships. The Honda Sports Award acknowledges athletic and academic achievement, as well as community involvement for the 12 different NCAA-sanctioned sports, including gymnastics. Often called the Heisman Trophy of women’s gymnastics, the AAI Award is given to an outstanding senior gymnast as nominated and voted for by the sport’s head coaches.

Key Gymnastics Terminology

Elite: The highest level of competitive gymnastics in the world.
Hit: When a gymnast performs a routine well and provides a usable score.
Level 10: The highest level of the women’s developmental program.
Olympic order: The specific order in which the events are competed at the Olympic Games: vault, bars, beam, floor.
Salute: The official start and end of a routine.
Specialist: A gymnast who competes on, and usually only trains on, three or fewer events.
College stick: Unlike a true stick, a college stick occurs when a gymnast quickly salutes and celebrates immediately after dismounting to cover up an uncontrolled landing.

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