INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Dec. 18, 2023) – Mercy University was one of 44 athletic departments across the country to earn the NCAA Division II Presidents' Award for Academic Excellence. The honor is bestowed upon institutions that achieved an Academic Success Rate (ASR) of 90 percent or higher in the most recent set of data.

Mercy University registered an ASR of 94 percent, which tied for 9th best in the country out of 312 institutions. The award, in its 13th year of being given, was collected by three ECC schools. Mercy had the second highest ASR of all ECC schools, and this is the second year in a row Mercy has earned the honor.

The Division II ASR includes transfers into a school in the calculation and removes those who transferred out of the school while academically eligible. The ASR also includes over 30,000 nonscholarship student-athletes who were enrolled in the four years covered in the most recent data.

Even when using the less-inclusive federal graduation rate, student-athletes are outperforming their peers in the general student population by 7%. For Division II student-athletes, the federal rate is 60%, while the general student body federal rate is 53%.