NCAA Resources: News Release | Academic Progress Rate Database
 
INDIANAPOLIS – Sun Belt Conference programs continued to show success in the classroom in the NCAA Academic Progress Rate (APR) data released by the NCAA national office.
 
In conference-sponsored sports, the Sun Belt posted an overall APR score of 979 with 30 programs achieving perfect scores of 1,000 from data from the 2015-16 through the 2018-19 academic year. Appalachian State (men's cross country, women's golf, women's soccer and women's tennis), Arkansas State (men's golf, women's cross country, women's golf and women's tennis), ULM  (men's basketball, men's cross country, women's golf and women's volleyball), South Alabama (men's cross country, men's golf, women's cross country and women's golf) and Texas State (men's golf, women's golf, women's soccer and women's tennis) boasted four teams each with perfect scores to lead the way for the Sun Belt.
 
Women's golf posted the league's highest single-sport APR (996) with eight of the 11 teams (Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, ULM, South Alabama, Texas State and Troy) achieving perfect scores.
 
NCAA Division I student-athletes continued to achieve classroom success at record-high levels, earning an overall multiyear Academic Progress Rate of 983 for the third consecutive year.
Like the overall multiyear rate, the multiyear rates for baseball, football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball were consistent or moved by a single point. Baseball was up one point to 977, football stayed at 964, men’s basketball dropped one to 966 and women’s basketball increased one to 983.
 
The APR, created to provide more of a real-time measurement of academic success than graduation rates offer, is a team-based metric in which 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 Academic Progress Rate calculated each academic year. The NCAA reports both single-year 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.