Nov. 8, 2017
THE FLATS – For the fifth-straight year, Georgia Tech athletics has posted its highest NCAA Graduation Success Rate ever, with its GSR coming in at 88 percent in the latest data that was released by the NCAA on Wednesday.
Georgia Tech’s 88-percent GSR is its highest since the NCAA began using the metric in 2005, topping last year’s record of 87 percent. Tech has posted an all-time best GSR each year since 2013.
At 88 percent, Georgia Tech’s GSR surpasses the Division I average of 87 percent, which is also an all-time record.
Individually, 10 of Georgia Tech’s 13 sports* have GSRs higher than the national average for their respective sports. Five programs – men’s cross country/track and field, women’s cross country/track and field, golf, women’s tennis and volleyball – own perfect 100-percent GSRs.
Each of Georgia Tech’s five programs that currently own 100-percent GSRs have done so for multiple years in a row. Leading the way is head coach Bruce Heppler’s golf program, which has posted a 100-percent GSR for 13-straight years since the metric was introduced in ’05. Women’s tennis and volleyball have recorded perfect GSRs for five-consecutive years and both men’s and women’s cross country/track and field have owned 100-percent GSRs in each of the last two years.
Football (82 pct. vs. national average of 75 pct.) and men’s basketball (82 pct. vs. national average of 78 pct.) are among the other Georgia Tech programs that exceed the national average for GSR in their respective sports.
“I am extremely proud that Georgia Tech continues to have record-setting NCAA Graduation Success Rates,” director of athletics Todd Stansbury said. “By producing market-ready graduates at a record pace, we will continue to differentiate ourselves by the success of our former student-athletes five and 10 years after graduation and beyond.”
GSR measures the success of an athletics department in graduating its student-athletes within a six-year period. Unlike Federal Graduation Rate, which assesses only first-time, full-time freshmen, GSR also includes transfer students and mid-year enrollees in the sample. Student-athletes who leave an institution while in good academic standing before exhausting athletics eligibility are removed from the cohort of their initial institution (essentially passed to another squad’s GSR cohort if they transfer and removed altogether in the case of early departures for professional careers). The GSR provides a more complete and accurate look at actual student-athlete success by taking into account the full variety of participants in Division I athletics and tracking their academic outcomes.
The latest GSR cohort includes student-athletes that enrolled at Georgia Tech from 2007-10.
* cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field are compiled as one sport for Graduation Success Rate purposes
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