NCAA RELEASE

INDIANAPOLIS - The Ivy League paced the nation once again in the NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for a fifth-consecutive year among Division I conferences with a combined 98 percent average across its eight institutions for Division I student-athletes who began college in 2008. Harvard helped the Ivy League attain its top mark, ranking tied for third on the individual school list with a GSR of 98 for student-athletes that began college in 2008.

Harvard was one of five schools from the Ivy League to score 98 or better. Dartmouth tied with Samford for the nation's lead with 99, while Columbia, Princeton and Yale all tied with Harvard at 98. Brown and Penn finished with marks of 97 and Cornell posted a score of 96 to give all Ivy League schools a top-25 finish.

Among the 30 varsity sports considered for the GSR, 21 of Harvard's 2008 teams posted perfect scores of 100.

The most recent one-year GSR for the entire 2008 NCAA class is 86 percent, the highest rate ever. Since the NCAA first began tracking the GSR with student-athletes who entered college in 1995, the rate has increased 12 percentage points.

The NCAA's Graduation Success Rate includes transfer students and student-athletes who leave in good academic standing. The GSR measures graduation over six years from first-time college enrollment.

The NCAA did not collect graduation rate data for student-athletes who were not receiving athletically-related aid until 2004.

Each spring, the NCAA also releases a separate set of data, the Academic Progress Rate (APR), which measures both academic performance and retention. Each athletic program receives an APR score, with teams falling under a certain threshold subject to penalties such as loss of scholarships and postseason bans. The top 10 percent in each sport receive APR Public Recognition Awards from the NCAA.