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College Sports Project reports new findings about

athletics and academics in NCAA Division III

The (CSP), an initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has released the second in a series of reports comparing academic performance between college athletes and non-athletes. For the student cohort entering college in 2006-2007, differences in college class rank between female athletes and non-athletes were relatively modest again this year. However, male athletes had class ranks 9 percentile points lower at the end of their first year of college when compared with their non-athlete counterparts. Recruited male athletes also had class ranks 6 percentile points lower than non-recruited male athletes.

For students now at the end of their first two years of college, the differences in average class rank between athletes and non-athletes shrank by one percentile point since their first year (2005-2006), possibly indicating that athletes gradually make positive adjustments to the demands of academic life. Women athletes in both cohorts fared better than their male counterparts, and non-recruited athletes of both genders had GPAs only slightly below those of non-athletes.

Percentile Class Rank GPA after Two Years: 2005-06 Entering Cohort