June 15, 2010
Vanderbilt’s Department of Student Athletics registered a near perfect mark in the NCAA’s annual Academic Performance Review for the 2009-10 school year.
Fourteen of the Commodores’ 16 varsity sports, including women’s swimming earned perfect scores of 1,000 in the important national evaluation that considers retention of student-athletes and their eligibility. The NCAA instituted the APR six years ago to emphasize academic success and give incentive to programs that typically experienced high roster turnover.
Every Vanderbilt sport except football and women’s basketball, which narrowly missed perfect marks, scored 1,000 for the recently concluded year. Significantly, seven Commodore teams were cited as being among the nation’s top tenth percentile.
Those programs are baseball, men’s cross country, men’s tennis, bowling, women’s golf, women’s soccer and women’s swimming.
The VU swimming program was the only swim program in the Southeastern Conference that ranked among the nation’s top tenth percentile.
“We expect outstanding results,” said Vice Chancellor David Williams, “but these marks represent our best performance ever. We had nearly 50% of our entire program finish in the top 10 percent, an accomplishment that should give every Vanderbilt fan considerable pride.”
The APR tabulation system is relatively simple. For each student-athlete on a given roster, there are two possible points awarded per semester and a total of four for the year. One point per semester is given for retention of that student and another given for progress toward a degree (eligibility).
Scores below 925 are deemed unsatisfactory and programs that miss that mark are subject to penalties, which include possible loss of scholarships.