EASTON, Pa.- Lafayette's athletic programs rank first in the nation in the NCAA's Division I annual Graduation Success Rate (GSR) report released Thursday afternoon. Lafayette claimed a 99 percent GSR overall for its 22 sports measured. Twenty-one Leopard teams achieved a graduation success rate of 100 percent.
In total, seven other schools matched Lafayette to earn a tie for first: the Ivy League's Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth and Columbia, the Atlantic Coast Conference's Duke and the Atlantic 10 Conference's La Salle. In the Patriot League, Lafayette equaled Holy Cross for the highest overall GSR (99), with Bucknell and Colgate following behind.
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 21 programs to receive perfect GSR scores were men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross country, fencing, men's and women's lacrosse, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's swimming and diving, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field alongside baseball, golf, field hockey, softball and volleyball.
In addition to those programs with perfect GSR scores, the Leopard football program ranked fourth in the country with a mark of 97 for the third straight year. The Leopards join institutions from the Southern Conference, the Colonial Athletic Association, the Big Ten Conference and the Ivy League in the top ten.
In the Patriot League, Lafayette football is only trailing Georgetown (100) and shadowing Holy Cross (98), while ranking well ahead of Bucknell (94), Colgate (93), 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 87 percent (four-class average).
