EASTON, Pa. – Lafayette's athletic programs ranked first in the nation in the NCAA's annual Graduation Success Rate (GSR) report released Tuesday afternoon. Lafayette claimed a 99 percent GSR overall for its 19 sports measured. Seventeen Lafayette programs achieved a graduation success rate of 100 percent.

Lafayette's GSR placed the Leopards' athletic program in elite company with Columbia, Dartmouth, Evansville, Harvard, Holy Cross, Loyola-Chicago, Samford and Yale all at 99.

The NCAA's GSR includes transfer students and student-athletes who leave in good academic standing, unlike the federal graduation rate, which does not count transfers. The GSR and federal rate calculations measure graduation over six years from when a student-athlete first enrolls.

The 17 programs to receive perfect GSR scores were baseball, men's basketball, men's fencing, men's golf, men's soccer, men's swimming and diving, men's tennis, men's cross country and track and field, women's basketball, field hockey, women's lacrosse, softball, women's soccer, women's swimming and diving, women's tennis, women's cross country and track and field and women's volleyball.  

In addition to those 17 programs with perfect GSR scores, the Leopard football program continued to stand out within the Patriot League, with a mark of 97 for the second straight year. Lafayette trailed only Georgetown (100), equaled Holy Cross and ranked ahead of Colgate (93), Bucknell (91), Fordham (88) and lastly, Lehigh (82).

The federal graduation rate, while less inclusive than the GSR, provides the only measure of historic academic comparison between student-athletes and the general student body. By this standard, student-athletes consistently outperform nearly all their peers in the student body. Lafayette student-athletes have a federal graduation rate of 86 percent (four-class average), well above the national rate of 69 percent.