THE FLATS – Georgia Tech athletics continues to boast a lofty NCAA Graduation Success Rate, with its GSR coming in at 88 percent in the latest data that was released by the NCAA on Wednesday.
Georgia Tech has achieved a GSR of 88 percent or higher for three-straight years and has been above 80 percent for six-consecutive years.
Five of Georgia Tech’s 13 sports programs* own perfect 100-percent GSRs (women’s cross country/track, golf, men’s swimming and diving, women’s tennis and volleyball), up from four teams with a 100-percent GSR last year.
Four of the five Tech teams that 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 all 15 years since the metric was introduced in 2005. Women’s tennis and volleyball have recorded perfect GSRs for seven-consecutive years and women’s cross country/track and field has owned a 100-percent GSR for each of the last four years.
Individually, nine of Georgia Tech’s 13 sports have GSRs higher than or equal to the national average for their respective sports (men’s cross country/track, women’s cross country/track, football, golf, softball, men’s swimming and diving, women’s swimming and diving, women’s tennis and volleyball), which is up from eight teams a year ago.
Golf exceeds the national average in its sport by 11 percentage points, while men’s swimming and diving is 10 points higher and women’s cross country/track is nine points higher than the national averages for their sports. Georgia Tech football exceeds the national average for FBS programs by eight percentage points (87 percent vs. national average of 79).
“It’s gratifying to once again see data that tells us our student-athletes are thriving at Georgia Tech,” director of athletics Todd Stansbury said. “Not only are they graduating at a high rate, but they’re receiving an incomparable education at this great Institute and participating in invaluable career-training opportunities, including elite summer internships, through our Total Person Program. All of these factors combined give our student-athletes an opportunity to truly thrive not just here at Georgia Tech but beyond graduation as well.”
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 2009-12.
* cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field are compiled as one sport for Graduation Success Rate purposes
For the latest information on the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, follow us on Twitter (@GTAthletics), Facebook, Instagram or visit us at www.ramblinwreck.com.
