University of Texas Women Earn Perfect APR Score from NCAA

The NCAA‘s Academic Progress Rate (APR) works to ensure that student-athletes are achieving in the classroom by measuring retention rates and eligibility. The metrics for APR calculation for each sports team is as follows, according to the NCAA website:

• Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible.
• A team’s total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by 1,000 to equal the team’s Academic Progress Rate.
• In addition to a team’s current-year APR, its rolling four-year APR is also used to determine accountability.

Also, check out this infographic at the bottom of the linked page that further explains how this score is formulated.

Teams must maintain a four-year average of 930 or higher to compete in NCAA championships. The highest possible score is 1000. Those teams that fail to reach 930 points can be penalized, either by restricting hours of practice to allocate more hours dedicated to academics, or suspending coaches and scholarships and restricted NCAA membership.

For the men, 15 swimming & diving teams achieved a perfect score for the 2015-16 season, which is the year with the most recent data:

Perfect Scoring Teams (men)

• Ball State University
• Boston College
• Brown University
• Bucknell University
• Canisius College
• College of William & Mary
• College of the Holy Cross
• Davidson College
• Georgetown University
• Georgia Tech
• Michigan State
• Missouri State
• Saint Louis University
• Penn
• Villanova

None of these teams are big players on the national stage athletically, and the only teams from a power 5 conference are the Big Ten’s Michigan State and the ACC’s Georgia Tech. Of high profile teams, LSU (997), Michigan (996), Denver (996), UNC (995), Harvard (994), Notre Dame (994), and Indiana (993) scored above 990.

On the other end of things, Ohio State and Cal both had lackluster scores of 956, the lowest for teams of their caliber.

Below are the top men’s swimming and diving programs which scored over 990 points, excluding the perfect-scoring teams.

On the women’s side, a whopping 28 teams reaching perfect scoring, while a great number of teams scored at least 990 points. Here are those perfect-scoring teams from the 2015-16 season:

Perfect Scoring Teams (women)

• Boise State University
• Boston University
• College of William & Mary
• College of the Holy Cross
• Dartmouth
• Davidson College
• Drexel University
• Fordham University
• George Washington University
• Georgetown University
• Lehigh University
• Loyola Marymount University
• Marshall University
• Notre Dame
• Penn
• Pepperdine University
• Providence College
• Tulane University
• University of Alabama
• University of Iowa
• University of Minnesota
• UNC-Wilmington
• University of Richmond
• University of Southern Carolina
• University of Texas
• Yale University

Of those perfect-scoring teams, perennial powers Texas and Minnesota are both present, along with several teams from power conferences. Like their men’s team, the Ohio State women struggled, managing only 976 points (the basement on the women’s side was 951, much higher than 923 on the men’s side).

View the list of women’s teams scoring 990 or above: