Northwestern football has the highest Academic Progress Rate score of any school in the FBS, according to data released by the NCAA on Wednesday. While this isn’t too significant—APR is a pass/fail measure of student athletes remaining in good standing academically, it’s still impressive that Northwestern ranks at the top. Nine other Northwestern sports teams earned perfect APR scores in the 2015-16 academic year.
As for football, this could be significant for bowl season as Northwestern would be the first team on the list to snag a bowl berth there are not enough teams over .500 in 2017. The only school, FCS included, to top Northwestern’s 995 APR score was Dartmouth (darn Ivy Leaguers). Pat Fitzgerald always talks about its success in the classroom, and it’s good to see that the program continues to back this claim up in the numbers. The Wildcats will not be in danger of academic penalties any time soon.
Baseball, women's golf, field hockey, softball, men's & women's soccer, volleyball, women's basketball, and cross country all achieved perfect APR scores. Hooray, everyone is staying in school!
You can look through all the data on the NCAA’s website. The full list for football programs is here.