There aren’t many power-conference football programs that can match Duke’s combination of athletic excellence and academic prestige, especially with the way the Blue Devils have performed since 2022.

The crowds at Wallace Wade Stadium have been treated to three consecutive eight-win seasons, including a 9-4 campaign in head coach Manny Diaz’s first season in Durham last year, and Tulane quarterback transfer Darian Mensah offers promise of an even higher ceiling in 2025.

But the most impressive part of Duke’s gridiron rise is that it hasn’t come at the expense of its roster’s education.

The NCAA recently updated its academic progress rates from the 2023-24 school year, updating the four-year rolling average for every football program intended to quantify how many players remain in school and academically eligible as they balance both sides of being a student athlete.

“Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible,” the NCAA explained in a release about the ranking, explaining that the calculated total from there is divided by possible points before being multiplied by 1000 to produce the final numbers seen below.

The ACC came in strong compared to its Power 4 peers. The SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 all had multiple programs below the lowest-ranked ACC school, and no member of the league even came close to the 930 benchmark for postseason ineligibility.

Here’s how all 17 members of the conference stack up in this year’s metrics.

17. Syracuse Orange

APR Score: 958

Previous Year: 958 (17th)

The Orange won 10 games under first-year head coach Fran Brown in 2024, but there’s only so much of a dent that he and his staff could make in Syracuse’s APR rolling average in a single season.

16. SMU Mustangs

APR Score: 960

Previous Year: 968 (16th)

The Mustangs reached the conference championship game and earned an at-large bid to the College Football Playoff in their first year as members of the ACC, but head coach Rhett Lashlee and his program have some ground to make up if they want a similar standing in the APR rankings.

APR Score: 969

Previous Year: 969 (15th)

The Yellow Jackets helped author some of college football’s most memorable games in 2024 by upsetting the Florida State Seminoles in Dublin, ending the Miami Hurricanes’ unbeaten season, and taking the Georgia Bulldogs to eight overtimes, but they stayed near the bottom of the conference in progress rate.

14. California Golden Bears

APR Score: 971

Previous Year: 976 (13th)

The Golden Bears had their hearts broken a half-dozen times in 2024, losing four consecutive games by five points or fewer in their first ACC season, and California suffered a slight knock in its academic progress rate on top of that.

APR Score: 974

Previous Year: 983 (10th)

Pittsburgh had one of the strangest seasons in the country last year, getting off to a 6-0 start before losing six of its last seven games, and the Panthers suffered one of the ACC’s biggest drops in APR score along with it.

12. Virginia Tech Hokies

APR Score: 976

Previous Year: 969 (14th)

The Hokies, on the other hand, made one of the more sizable APR jumps among ACC teams. If not for an overtime loss to Vanderbilt in the season opener and a last-second touchdown that got overturned against Miami, Virginia Tech would have finished with eight wins as well.

APR Score: 983

Previous Year: 985 (7th)

The Cavaliers came within one win of bowl eligibility in 2024 thanks to a late-season ranked victory over Pittsburgh, but Virginia lost six of its last seven to finish with just five victories.

APR Score: 984

Previous Year: 987 (4th)

Former Purdue coach Jeff Brohm has been a runaway success with the Cardinals, winning 19 games in his first two seasons with a conference title game appearance in 2023, and Louisville remained in the ACC’s top 10 in academic progress rate despite a slight dip.

APR Score: 985

Previous Year: 986 (6th)

The Cardinal parted ways with former head coach Troy Taylor in March after just two seasons with the program, and Stanford won two conference games to finish 3-9 in its ACC debut. The school remains an academic powerhouse, however, and former NFL head coach Frank Reich will serve as the team’s interim coach for 2025.

8. Miami Hurricanes

APR Score: 986

Previous Year: 981 (12th)

The Hurricanes came achingly close to a College Football Playoff appearance in 2024, losing two of their last three regular-season games after a 9-0 start, but head coach Mario Cristobal can advertise this jump in the classroom along with his program’s positive momentum to future recruits.

7. Boston College Eagles

APR Score: 986

Previous Year: 984 (9th)

Bill O’Brien, another former NFL head coach, won seven games in his first season with Boston College after breaking onto the scene with a 28-13 road win against FSU back in Week 1. Two points might not sound like a massive jump in academic progress rate, but it did move the Eagles up two spots in the ACC rankings.

6. NC State Wolfpack

APR Score: 987

Previous Year: 984 (8th)

The Wolfpack also made a slight jump in the APR rankings despite failing to win eight games for the first time since 2019. Head coach Dave Doeren did get some promising play from freshman quarterback CJ Bailey, however, so keep an eye on NC State’s offense in 2025.

APR Score: 987

Previous Year: 987 (5th)

If there’s a way to quantify academic success in the ACC, chances are the Blue Devils are near the top of the list. Head coach Manny Diaz said ahead of the 2024 campaign that Duke succeeds in the transfer portal because a degree from the school is hard to ignore, and the Blue Devils lost the second-fewest players to the transfer portal of any Power 4 program to prove his logic sound.

APR Score: 990

Previous Year: 982 (11th)

The Seminoles took one of the most shocking on-field stepbacks in recent memory last year, free-falling from 13 wins in 2023 to two wins in 2024. But Florida State took an opposite step in the academic progress rate standings, jumping within the ACC’s top five after starting outside the top 10.

3. Wake Forest Demon Deacons

APR Score: 995

Previous Year: 991 (3rd)

Wake Forest picked up four additional points in the progress rate to climb within striking distance of a perfect 1000, and the Demon Deacons will play their first season under new head coach Jake Dickert in 2025.

APR Score: 995

Previous Year: 995 (2nd)

Two-time national champion Dabo Swinney often talks about how he’d prefer to help his internal talent progress rather than adding through the transfer portal, and the Clemson Tigers‘ consistent excellence in the academic progress rate shows his commitment to every player in his program.

1. North Carolina Tar Heels

APR Score: 996

Previous Year: 996 (1st)

All anyone wants to talk about right now in Chapel Hill is the team’s new head coach, six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick, but the North Carolina Tar Heels still have the highest academic progress rate in the ACC regardless of what’s to come under the New England Patriots legend.