Published on November 18, 2020 by Joey Mullins  
2020 21 Digital Graduation Success Rate Social Graphics 5 Twitter

Samford University’s student-athletes lead the nation in the NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR).

Samford was one of nine schools to score 99 on the latest GSR for all Division I student-athletes who began their college careers in 2013. Other schools include Columbia, Dartmouth, Evansville, Harvard, Lafayette, College of the Holy Cross, Loyola-Chicago and Yale. Samford has a long history of performing among the nation's elite universities for its combination of excellence in academic and athletic performance and has consistently earned an overall GSR above 90 percent since 2012.

The NCAA Division I Committee on Academic Performance implemented the initial release of the GSR in 2005 in order to more accurately assess the academic success of student-athletes. The most recent GSR measures how many student-athletes in the classes of 2010 through 2013 graduated within six years of their enrollment. Ten of Samford's teams earned perfect scores of 100 percent — baseball, men's basketball, men's golf, men's tennis, women's basketball, women's golf, softball, soccer, women's tennis and volleyball. Every Samford team was at or above the national average in the report, making Samford the only SoCon school to achieve that feat. 

“We are extremely proud of our student-athletes for achieving such impressive scores,” Samford’s assistant director of Athletics for Academics Paige Mathis said. “The work that they have put in in the classroom has been outstanding, and these scores prove how dedicated our student-athletes are to performing at the highest level, not only in competition, but in the classroom as well.”

The NCAA developed the Division I Graduation Success Rate in response to college and university presidents who wanted graduation data that more accurately reflect the mobility among all college students today. The graduation-rate data are based on a six-year cohort prescribed by the U.S. Department of Education.

Samford competes in 17 NCAA Division I sports in the historic Southern Conference.

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 5,791 students from 49 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.