Notre Dame Continues Making The Graduation Grade
On the week the University of Notre Dame completed final examinations (May 6-10) for the 2019 spring semester, the latest set of statistics released by the NCAA on Academic Progress Rating (APR) demonstrated the school’s non-stop commitment to achievement by its student-athletes.
Notre Dame paced all Football Bowl Subdivision programs with 14 APR Public Recognition Awards, including 13 perfect scores of 1,000, which also led FBS schools.
It marked the fourth time in the 14-year history of the APR in which at least 13 Irish teams had scored perfectly, with the others occurring in 2006 (the first year of the APR), 2015 and 2016.
Only three schools — Notre Dame, Boston College and Stanford — have had 13 or more teams post scores of 1,000 in a single report. Notre Dame's number of perfect scores of 1,000 has ranked first eight times, with an institutional record of 17 in 2015, and second on six occasions among all FBS programs for 14 straight years (see below).
All 24 varsity sports at Notre Dame that were surveyed scored above the APR average in each sport, and the only one under 990 was football at 966. The 13 programs with perfect scores were baseball, men's cross country, men's fencing, men's soccer, men's and women's tennis, men's track and field, softball, women's basketball, women's golf, women's lacrosse, women's swimming and diving, and volleyball. The men's lacrosse team also earned an APR Public Recognition Award with a score of 995.
The APR, created to provide more of a real‐time measurement of academic success than graduation rates offer, is a team-based metric where scholarship student-athletes earn one point each term for remaining eligible and one point for staying in school or graduating. Schools that don't offer scholarships track their recruited student-athletes.
Every Division I sports team submits data to have its APR calculated each academic year. The NCAA reports both single-year rates and four-year rates, on which penalties for poor academic performance are based. National aggregates are based on all teams with usable, member-provided data.
The four-year rates include student-athletes who were in school between the 2014-15 and 2017-18 academic years.
Here is where Notre Dame has ranked annually among FBS institutions in terms of raw numbers of individual team 1,000 APR scores:
2019 — 1. Notre Dame 13 (6 men's sports, 7 women's sports); 2. (tie) Stanford, Northwestern 12; 4. Boston College 11; 5. Syracuse 9
2018 — 1. Stanford 16; 2. Notre Dame 12 (5 men's, 7 women's); 3. (tie) Boston College, Northwestern 11; 5. (tie) Duke, North Carolina 10
2017 — 1. Stanford 14; 2. Notre Dame 12 (4 men's, 8 women's); 3. Boston College 11; 4. (tie) Duke, Minnesota, Northwestern 9; 7. Michigan 8; 8. (tie) California, North Carolina, Rice, Rutgers 7
2016 — 1. Notre Dame 16 (7 men's, 9 women's); 2. Stanford 14; 3. Boston College 12; 4. Minnesota 11; 5. Rice 10; 6. (tie) Duke, Northwestern 9; 8. Tulane 7, 9. (tie) Auburn, Michigan, North Carolina 6
2015 — 1. Notre Dame 17 (9 men's, 8 women's); 2. Stanford 15; 3. Northwestern 12; 4. Boston College 10; 5. Duke 9; 6. Minnesota 7; 7. (tie) Arizona State, Tulane, Vanderbilt 7; 10. (tie) Illinois, North Carolina, Penn State, Rice 6
2014 — 1. Stanford 12; 2. Notre Dame 11 (7 men's, 4 women's); 3. Northwestern 10; 4. Minnesota 9; 5. (tie) Boston College, Duke 8; 7. Penn State 7; 8. (tie) Ohio State, Vanderbilt 6
2013 — 1. Notre Dame 12 (8 men's, 4 women's); 2. Stanford 11; 3. Duke 10; 4. (tie) Boston College, Northwestern 9; 6. Vanderbilt 7; 7. Rice 6
2012 — 1. Notre Dame 12 (8 men's, 4 women's); 2. (tie) Boston College, Duke 9; 4. (tie) Northwestern, Vanderbilt 8; 6. Stanford 7; 7. (tie) North Carolina, Rice, Texas 5
2011 — 1. Duke 10; 2. Notre Dame 9 (5 men's, 4 women's); 3. Boston College 6, 4. (tie) Michigan, Northwestern, Penn State, Texas, Tulane, U.S. Naval Academy, Vanderbilt 5
2010 — 1. Duke 10, 2. Notre Dame 8 (5 men's, 3 women's); 3. Boston College 7
2009 — 1. Notre Dame 9 (4 men's, 5 women's); 2. Duke 8; 3. (tie) Boston College, Stanford 6; 5. U.S. Naval Academy 5; 6. Michigan 4
2008 — 1. (tie) Notre Dame 8 (5 men's, 3 women's), Duke 8; 3. Boston College 7; 4. Stanford 5; 5. (tie) Northwestern, Rice, U.S. Naval Academy 4
2007 — 1. Boston College 10, 2. Notre Dame 9 (5 men's, 4 women's); 3. (tie) Rice, Stanford, U.S. Naval Academy 7; 6. Duke 6; 7. Northwestern 5
2006 — 1. (tie) Notre Dame 14 (7 men's, 7 women's), Boston College 14
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