College Comparison VIII: Differentials in Expected/Actual Graduation Rates

College Search & Selection
1

<p>In order to assist some in their college search process, I have prepared a series of threads that will compare colleges on a variety of measurements. In making these comparisons, I have created three broad groups (private national universities, public national universities and liberal arts colleges) and provide comparisons involving 117 colleges (national universities ranked in the USNWR Top 75 and LACs ranked in the USNWR Top 40). </p>

<p>Following is a comparison on the DIFFERENTIALS IN EXPECTED/ACTUAL GRADUATION RATES as compiled by USNWR. </p>

<p>To aid in the comparisons, I have included the level of the highest-ranking public universities with each of the private groups for National Universities and LACs. This should help families appreciate the way that the very top scoring public compares with their private competition. </p>

<p>I hope that you enjoy the thread and find some helpful information. Good luck to all in your college search process!</p>

<p>Difference , Expected 6-Yr Grad Rate , Actual 6-Yr Grad Rate , Private National University</p>

<p>18% , 67% , 85% , TOP PUBLIC (Penn State)
9% , 69% , 78% , Fordham
5% , 75% , 80% , Syracuse
4% , 94% , 98% , Harvard
4% , 86% , 90% , Brandeis
4% , 75% , 79% , BYU
4% , 92% , 96% , Notre Dame
3% , 89% , 92% , Tufts
3% , 88% , 91% , Boston College
2% , 95% , 97% , Yale
2% , 91% , 93% , Cornell
2% , 91% , 93% , Georgetown
2% , 86% , 88% , Wake Forest
2% , 83% , 85% , Lehigh
2% , 82% , 84% , Yeshiva
2% , 93% , 95% , Columbia
2% , 93% , 95% , Dartmouth
1% , 95% , 96% , Princeton
1% , 94% , 95% , U Penn
1% , 94% , 95% , Duke
1% , 92% , 93% , Northwestern
1% , 90% , 91% , Johns Hopkins
1% , 92% , 93% , Rice
1% , 73% , 74% , SMU
1% , 93% , 94% , Brown
0% , 94% , 94% , Stanford
0% , 92% , 92% , U Chicago
0% , 80% , 80% , Worcester
-1% , 95% , 94% , Wash U
-1% , 90% , 89% , Vanderbilt
-1% , 85% , 84% , NYU
-2% , 96% , 94% , MIT
-2% , 89% , 87% , Carnegie Mellon
-2% , 90% , 88% , USC
-2% , 79% , 77% , U Miami
-3% , 83% , 80% , Boston University
-3% , 85% , 82% , Rensselaer
-4% , 85% , 81% , George Washington
-4% , 85% , 81% , Pepperdine
-5% , 89% , 84% , U Rochester
-6% , 87% , 81% , Case Western
-7% , 95% , 88% , Caltech
-7% , 95% , 88% , Emory
-10% , 84% , 74% , Tulane</p>

<p>Difference , Expected 6-Yr Grad Rate , Actual 6-Yr Grad Rate , </p>

<p>18% , 67% , 85% , PENN STATE
13% , 60% , 73% , INDIANA U
13% , 62% , 75% , MICHIGAN ST
11% , 65% , 76% , U CONNECTICUT
10% , 70% , 80% , U DELAWARE
8% , 65% , 73% , OHIO STATE
6% , 71% , 77% , U WASHINGTON
6% , 69% , 75% , RUTGERS
6% , 66% , 72% , PURDUE
6% , 72% , 78% , VIRGINIA TECH
5% , 82% , 87% , UC S BARBARA
5% , 71% , 76% , U PITTSBURGH
5% , 75% , 80% , U GEORGIA
5% , 74% , 79% , CLEMSON
4% , 89% , 93% , U VIRGINIA
4% , 84% , 88% , U N CAROLINA
4% , 74% , 78% , TEXAS A&M
4% , 78% , 82% , U ILLINOIS
4% , 78% , 82% , U WISCONSIN
3% , 63% , 66% , U IOWA
2% , 87% , 89% , UCLA
2% , 86% , 88% , U MICHIGAN
2% , 76% , 78% , U TEXAS
2% , 80% , 82% , U MARYLAND
1% , 89% , 90% , UC BERKELEY
1% , 81% , 82% , U FLORIDA
0% , 91% , 91% , WILLIAM & MARY
0% , 66% , 66% , U MINNESOTA
-1% , 82% , 81% , UC DAVIS
-1% , 82% , 81% , UC IRVINE
-1% , 86% , 85% , UC SAN DIEGO
-3% , 79% , 76% , UC S CRUZ
-6% , 83% , 77% , GEORGIA TECH</p>

<p>Difference , Expected 6-Yr Grad Rate , Actual 6-Yr Grad Rate , LAC</p>

<p>18% , 67% , 85% , TOP PUBLIC (Penn State)
6% , 80% , 86% , US Naval Acad
5% , 83% , 88% , Smith
5% , 86% , 91% , Hamilton
5% , 82% , 87% , Colorado College
5% , 89% , 94% , Holy Cross
4% , 88% , 92% , Vassar
4% , 82% , 86% , Occidental
4% , 88% , 92% , Whitman
3% , 88% , 91% , Wellesley
3% , 86% , 89% , Lafayette
3% , 93% , 96% , Williams
3% , 92% , 95% , Amherst
3% , 91% , 94% , Haverford
3% , 91% , 94% , Claremont McK
2% , 91% , 93% , Carleton
2% , 91% , 93% , Wesleyan
2% , 78% , 80% , US Military Acad
2% , 89% , 91% , Colgate
2% , 86% , 88% , Kenyon
2% , 84% , 86% , Trinity
2% , 92% , 94% , Davidson
1% , 92% , 93% , Middlebury
1% , 90% , 91% , Bowdoin
1% , 94% , 95% , Pomona
1% , 88% , 89% , Bucknell
1% , 84% , 85% , Furman
1% , 81% , 82% , Mt. Holyoke
0% , 90% , 90% , Colby
0% , 89% , 89% , Barnard
0% , 77% , 77% , Sewanee
-2% , 94% , 92% , Swarthmore
-2% , 88% , 86% , Grinnell
-2% , 91% , 89% , Bates
-3% , 93% , 90% , Harvey Mudd
-3% , 89% , 86% , Bryn Mawr
-3% , 90% , 87% , Macalester
-4% , 93% , 89% , W&L
-4% , 86% , 82% , Scripps
-4% , 91% , 87% , U Richmond
-5% , 88% , 83% , Oberlin
-11% , 87% , 76% , Bard</p>

2

<p>I still don’t understand what “expected” means and why this difference is interesting or matters. Can someone explain why this measure is used?</p>

3

<p>I was wondering the same thing.</p>

4

<p>“Expected graduation rate” is the grad rate predicted by a multiple regression equation based primarily on SATs, high school rank, and expenditures per student.</p>

<p>I think the Penn State data is bogus.</p>

5

<p>In other words, it is a tool used by USNews to level the playing field by rewarding schools that report less competitive selectivity numbers and penalizing the most selective schools in the nation with incredibly high graduation rates. </p>

<p>For instance in the LAC section, this is how a “more selective” school such as Smith regains all the points lost by its lower selectivity, and the most selective LAC in the nation, namely Harvey Mudd is handicapped. </p>

<p>A few years ago, USNews pushed the ricidule envelope so far as requiring Mudd to graduate close to 100% of its students, and this despite being arguably the most difficult engineering UG in the nation. </p>

<p>Of course, in the category of ridicule, nothing beats the Washington Monthly garbage rankings that are so well computed to expect Harvard to graduate 101% of its students. </p>

<p>A few years ago, USNews removed the yield criteria. This one should be the next on the chopping block.</p>

6

<p>^^ OMG, that’s MESSED UP, y’all!!!</p>

7

<p>Yeah, the “expectation” rate never made any sense to me whatsoever.</p>

8

<p>Where this metric really becomes meaningful and understandable is in the case of Berea College, which has a positive 20-point spread between predicted and actual graduation rates. Washington Monthly ranks it #1 among LACs for social mobility. But that’s really an important element of the school’s mission:</p>

<p>

[quote]
Founded in 1855 as the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, Berea charges no tuition and admits only academically promising students, primarily from Appalachia, who have limited economic resources.<a href=“from%20the%20Berea%20College%20Site”>/quote</a></p>

<p>Among highly selective schools, you can’t squeeze much more juice from the fruit when you’re expecting more than 90%. Kids get sick; other bad stuff happens that has nothing to do with the school; this lowers the max possible to something lower than 100%. Then too, the metric may be obscuring differences in academic standards. Swatties dropping out because the school is so hard would have a different shade of meaning than Macalester kids transferring because they’re freezing their buns off in Minnesota.</p>

9

<p>xiggi, is there a metric you do like? </p>

<p>I believe the expected graduation rate differential has some value. It shows what schools are over and underperforming…however, I agree that when you get to the uber selective colleges, this metric becomes less important.</p>

10

<p>As usual, xiggi hits the nail on the head. This measurement advantages the colleges with the less selective student bodies. </p>

<p>For all the whining and complaining by some on CC about how standardized test scoring is unfair to some schools (and many of these USNWR ranking-conspiracy theorists will stop at almost nothing to halt the linkage between student body strength and standardized test scores), I have rarely read any of these folks objecting to the differential number’s inclusion in the USNWR methodology. But the differential’s 5% weight is not hugely different from the 7.5% accorded to standardized test scores. The net ranking effect is to stifle the standardized test differences among colleges and further level the ranking playing field in order to mollify some of the USA’s more visible institutions that don’t rank as highly as the academic elites would like.</p>

11

<p>UCB, there are metrics I do like, and you know that. </p>

<p>However, in sticking to the scope of this thread, do you think it makes sense for the USNews to reward a school that reports a drop in selectivity with a better overall score, as the “loss” in the selectivity indx wth MORE than compensated by a gain in the expected graduation rate index? </p>

<p>In so many words, is it fair to ask why a school that attracts students with lesser stats, lowers the academic expectations, and graduates more of its students over a six-year period might be considered a better school in the USNews rankings?</p>

12

<p>

There is more value in having a college degree than not having one.</p>

13

<p>

</p>

<p>I thought you were one of our leading conspiracy theorists!</p>

<p>Anyway, I think the metric can be useful for schools outside of the elite. But among schools with a high expected graduation rate, it’s a problematic measure for the very reasons xiggi states.</p>

14

<p>

</p>

<p>Note, however, that this metric doesn’t help the elite publics, either. UC Berkeley’s scores—89% expected, 90% actual, net +1—are virtually indistinguishable from, say, Johns Hopkins (90% expected, 91% actual, net +1). Similarly, Michigan’s numbers—86% expected, 88% actual, net +2—are identical to Wake Forest’s.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Not sure which institutions those would be, hawkette, but this statement is somewhat misleading. Directly-measured SAT scores do account for only 7.5% of a school’s overall US News rating. But actual graduation rate accounts for another 16% of the school’s overall rating, and freshman retention rate another 4% (total = 20% for actual “graduation and retention rates”). Since it’s been amply demonstrated in the literature that graduation and retention rates are pretty strongly correlated with SAT scores (among other factors), you might say that SAT scores are indirectly reflected in those metrics as well. </p>

<p>What US News is really doing here is heaping huge rewards on schools with high actual graduation and freshman retention rates (20% of total score)—thus indirectly rewarding them for high SAT scores, high expenditures per student, and high family incomes, among other factors correlated with high graduation and retention rates—and then at the last minute pulling its punches just a little (to the tune of 5% of the total score) by making those schools show they at least are not underperforming relative to the level that would be predicted based on SAT scores and the like.</p>

<p>I don’t like this metric, not least because it’s really opaque. And its inclusion seems completely at odds with rewarding schools for high graduation and freshman retention rates in the first place. But I don’t think its inclusion is nearly as damaging to schools with high SAT scores as some posters here would make out, precisely because all it’s doing is partially offsetting actual graduation and freshman retention rates which weigh so much more heavily in the overall US News score.</p>

15

<p>This metric could tell you which schools are doing best with the students they admit. In other words, if you identify a group of schools with the same or similar selectivity, you can tell which schools are most effective at graduating students. I view it as a measure of school quality as opposed to student quality. It separates the quality of the college from the quality of its students.</p>

16

<p>If a college is graduating 95% of its incoming freshmen, the college needs to roll the greens, set harder pins, let the rough grow, and move the tees back. At 95%, figuring you lose some to transfer, illness, and attrition, you have to be graduating slackers and basketweavers.</p>

17

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</p>

<p>Or perhaps they have a well-run admissions process.</p>

<p>I’ll put it to you this way. I suspect that many medical schools have 95+% graduation rates. Yet nobody accuses medical school of being easy, nor does anybody think doctors are incompetent. Rather, med-schools run tight admissions policies. The hardest part of med-school is getting in.</p>

18

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</p>

<p>Well, that’s presuming that somebody is simply naively using OLS as the statistical model. Just use logit/probit.</p>

19

<p>

</p>

<p>As UCBChemEng said, it’s better to have a degree than to not have one. We live in a world where, apart from certain professions such as entrepreneurship or professional sports, if you want a decent career, you basically need a degree from some college. It’s therefore better to graduate from an easy school than to flunk out of a hard one, for if you flunk out of school degree, employers and grad schools aren’t going to care why. All they’re going to see is that you flunked out. Sad but true. </p>

<p>Hence, I think it is entirely appropriate for students and their parents to want to know what the chances are for students to graduate. Schools who graduate a high percentage of their students, after normalization for the ‘expected’ graduation rate, are doing an excellent job of providing students with that all-important degree.</p>

<p>In a perfect world, the degree wouldn’t matter, for employers and grad schools would care only about what you actually learned in college. But we don’t live in that world. In this world, employers and grad schools care about degrees.</p>