The national champion Georgia Bulldog women lead 12 NCAA Division I programs from last year’s top 25 to earn perfect 100% Graduation Success Rates (GSR) over the past four-year period.
The NCAA tracks GSR scores and releases them each year. The methodology is somewhat complex, but attempts to track how many scholarship student-athletes in an NCAA athletic program earn their degrees within 6 years. Each year’s score takes into account four separate recruiting classes. This year’s numbers track the classes who began their college careers in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. That 2006 class would have six years to finish their degrees, through 2012. The 2009 class would have through the year 2015, which is the most recent data available to the NCAA.
A perfect score of 100 essentially means that every student who earned a scholarship from that program within that four-year period finished their college degree within 6 years, with a few exceptions. For example, students who transfer out to a different institution while in good academic standing don’t count against that program even if they don’t eventually graduate from the new program to which they transferred.
12 different programs from last year’s NCAA Swimming Championships top 25 (for both men and women) earned perfect scores of 100 in the most recent numbers. That’s led by the national champs on the women’s side, Georgia. 9 women’s programs earned 100% scores, including top 10 programs Cal (#3), Virginia (#5), Indiana (#7), NC State (#9) and Michigan (#10). Only 3 men’s programs hit the 100% mark, including two top-10 teams: #6 Alabama and #7 Tennessee.
You can find a more full explanation of graduation success rates on the NCAA website here. There is also a tool that allows you to search for programs based on sport, conference, year, school or state. For swimming, 10 men’s programs and 77 women’s programs hit 100% for a total of 87 swimming programs.
Here are the full lists of Division I swimming & diving programs with 100% graduation success rates:
Teams that finished inside of the top 25 at NCAAs last year are marked with their 2016 NCAA finishing spot.
Men’s Programs With 100% GSR
- #6 Alabama
- #7 Tennessee
- #22 Miami (Florida) – diving only
- Providence
- Fordham
- Manhattan College
- Harvard
- Georgetown
- Villanova
- American
- Brown
- Dartmouth
- Holy Cross
- Yale
- Evansville
- Xavier
- Notre Dame
- Loyola
Women’s Programs With 100% GSR
- #1 Georgia
- #3 California
- #5 Virginia
- #7 Indiana
- #9 NC State
- #10 Michigan
- #18 North Carolina
- #22 Kentucky
- #25 Virginia Tech
- SUNY – Buffalo
- CSU – Bakersfield
- Denver
- Duquesne
- UNC-Wilmington
- Illinois State
- Marshall
- Fordham
- Fairfield
- Bowling Green
- Lehigh
- Incarnate Word
- Florida State
- UW- Green Bay
- Manhattan
- Vanderbilt
- Saint Francis
- Drexel
- Northwestern
- Davidson
- Tulane
- Harvard
- Sacred Heart
- Lafayette
- Eastern Michigan
- Bryant
- Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Arkansas
- Pacific
- Delaware
- New Hampshire
- Iona
- Colgate
- Idaho
- Siena
- George Washington
- Brown
- Georgetown
- Ohio
- San Diego
- Rice
- Villanova
- Penn
- Liberty
- Bucknell
- Dartmouth
- Evansville
- Yale
- Xavier
- Holy Cross
- Columbia University – Barnard College
- Hawaii
- Rider
- Louisiana State
- Notre Dame
- Dornell
- Butler
- Wagner
- South Carolina
- Western Illinois
- Florida Atlantic
- Loyola Marymount
- Boston College
- George Mason
- Northeastern
- Miami (Florida)
- Seton Hall
- Princeton
Gender differences in this data set are astonishing. Hmmm. Why the huge difference?
Why are we congratulating student-athletes and these programs for completing a 4 year degree in 6 years?
It makes you wonder why so many men’s programs didn’t achieve 100%???? Pretty sad.
We arent. We are congratulating teams with the highest graduation rates in the county.
“A perfect score of 100 essentially means that every student who competed for that program within that four-year period finished their college degree within 6 years.”
Appreciate the article, just adding a little insight on the GSR calculation. First, Federal Graduation Rate (FGR) and GSR only track athletic scholarship students, so in a sport like swimming & diving where walk-ons or students on significant academic scholarships matter they aren’t factored into the graduation equation unless it’s a Division 1 school that does not offer athletic scholarships. The GSR also removes transfers from the denominator if they leave in good academic standing. And if a student transfers into a school and graduates they are added to that institutions numerator. Example:… Read more »
1anda2 – good points. There are some wrinkles based on scholarships and transfers. We’ve added in a brief paragraph shedding some more light on their effects on the numbers.