Nov. 19, 2009

LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. - Siena College earned the fifth highest Student-Athlete Graduation Success Rate (95%) according to the 2009 NCAA Division I Federal Graduation Rates and NCAA Graduation Success Rates Report which was released Monday afternoon. Siena had the ninth best Student-Athlete Graduation Rate (84%), which was 5% higher than the school's regular student body.

"The report gives graduation information about students and student-athletes entering in 2002," according the NCAA web site. "This is the most recent graduating class for which the required six years of information is available."

Additionally, nine of Siena's 18 Division I sports posted a perfect 100% cohort GSR which considers scholarship student-athletes who entered school from 1999-2002 and graduated within the six-year window. Those sports were: men's cross country, men's golf, men's tennis, women's cross country, women's field hockey, women's soccer, softball and water polo. Each of Siena's varsity teams equaled or outperformed the cohort GSR national average.

Siena's basketball programs surpassed the cohort GSR national average by a large margin. The men's basketball team posted an 86% cohort GSR according to the report, while the national average is 64%. The women's basketball team posted a 93% cohort GSR compared to the national average of 83%.

The NCAA developed the GSR five years ago because the federal graduation rate does not credit institutions with student-athletes who leave in good academic standing or for transfers into the school who graduate. The GSR accounts for both of those transfer groups, which has resulted in a more accurate depiction of student-athlete academic success, since it captures about 35 percent more students than the federal methodology.

Siena's GSR has been above 93% in every report.

The GSR adds to the first-time freshmen, those students who entered midyear, as well as student-athletes who transferred into an institution. In addition, the GSR will subtract students from the entering cohort who are considered allowable exclusions (those who either die or become permanently disabled, those who leave the school to join the armed forces, foreign services or attend a church mission), as well as those who would have been academically eligible to compete had they returned to the institution. The exhausted-eligibility rate indicates the percentage of student-athletes who used all of their athletics eligibility at this college or university and who graduated by August 2008.

"A graduation rate (percent) is based on a comparison of the number (N) of students who entered a college or university and the number of those who graduated within six years." For example, for every 100 Siena student-athletes entering school, 84 graduate within six years.

Siena led all Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference institutions with an 84% graduation rate. The Saints were second among MAAC schools in GSR (behind only Loyola University Maryland's 96%).