<p>College selectivity ratings for freshman applicants are easy to find. An important additional rating would be percentage of freshman who don't complete their as-advertised 4-yr degree in 4 fulltime years, a pseudo dropout rate statistic.</p>
<p>I do not want to get into a discussion of how taking 5 years to complete a 4-yr degree doesn't qualify as 'dropout.' Or that switching from full time to part time would not either. However the list was compiled, it's definition would have to be completely defined.</p>
<p>A dropout rate list could indicate a college's ability to select their freshmen in the first place, effectiveness of college-sponsored student supports, and determination to see their students obtain what had been advertised.</p>
<p>What would a low dropout rate necessarily mean? A high one?</p>
<p>Most colleges provide this information in the big college listing books and on their websites, but a simple list of them all would be interesting.</p>
<p>The US Department of Education standard is 6 years, not 4. Many programs are designed to take more than 4 years. Students who take internships or co-op often require more than 4 years. When a school has higher drop-out rates it generally means they are less selctive in admissions. Among schools similar in selectivity it means that some schools may have more difficult curricula (such as engineering and science), higher grading standards, or, perhaps more students who are unhappy with the education they are receiving.</p>
<p>Lists of graduation rates are available (US News) or can be generated with online tools such as IPEDS Peer Analysis System.</p>
<p>The US News site I checked requires I pay for the information, and the IPEDS Peer Analysis System site is way too complicated to get the simple answer.</p>
<p>Thank you, still, for your response.</p>
<p>I think my OP was pretty clear, so I say again, it would be helpful to see a ranking of schools by their drop out rate.</p>
<p>It would take interpretation to get value out of it — that’s required out of pretty much every other metric we use in assessing schools.</p>
<p>Oh wow… it blocks links from other college webpages.</p>
<p>Search “6-year graduation rates” in Google, choose the second to last link, click on 90-100%.</p>
<p>FWIW, the list:</p>
<p>Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Notre Dame
Amherst
Williams
Dartmouth
Pomona
Georgetown
Stanford
Brown
UPenn
Haverford
Duke
Rice
Carleton
UVA
Middleburry
Northwestern
Cornell</p>
<p>That’s from 97.9% to 92.9%. Too lazy to type all of the numbers, but after a 1.8% drop from Harvard to PTon, it’s a pretty evenly spread continuum.</p>
<p>A high drop-out rate does not necessarily mean much. Many public universities are obligated to accept every student with an X GPA or a Y ACT/SAT exam score in their state. A few are still open admission (you are breathing? you are in). Students who survive the shock of encountering the performance expectations of their college/university instructors tend to graduate within the 4-6 year time frame of the famous-name institutions. Students who don’t survive that shock are gone - some of them before the end of the first month of school.</p>
<p>There are smaller private Us and LACs that do have somewhat selective admissions policies, but yet manage to have graduation rates in the 70% range. As a parent, I would be given pause about that kind of graduation rate, and I’d want to investigate the probable causes.</p>
<p>I think the more important number is freshman-sophomore year retention.</p>
<p>I agree that’s important when you’re considering a school or are already a freshman, but it’s pretty irrelevant, per se, to already-sophomores, juniors, seniors.</p>
<p>Too, retention is not the same as achievement, i.e., attaining the goal, which for most, is a degree via a good education.</p>
<p>rootsandwings, I only mean that number as an indicator that people aren’t getting to a school spending a year there and either collapsing under stress or feeling the school was not at all what was advertised, or generally are quite unhappy with the school.</p>
<p>If you see the mass-exodus of people after one year, that’s probably not a great sign. For instance, I think that a school with a transfer-out rate of 1% after freshman year is far more appealing than one with a 20% transfer-out rate. People vote with their feet…</p>
<p>You’re asking what these numbers may mean, and the answer is quite a bit or very little. I think the freshman number is a bit easier to pin-down and less effected by things like study abroad, gap years, etc than the 4 or 6 year number.</p>
<p>Modestmelody, I totally agree. And thanks for the list so far! It sounds like you have access to exactly the info wed like here.</p>
<p>By the list, theres a very strong correlation between selectivity and getting the degree. In part, its not surprising because to be accepted into a most selective school one has to be exceptionally motivated to succeed and demonstrated it in the first place (we all know). But most people dont get into the most selectives, by definition, and the correlation may not hold down the food chain.</p>
<p>I know a surprisingly selective and expensive private New England college with an almost non-existent graduation rate (their admissions officer choked when my D asked about it during her interview 2 years ago). But hey, that ocean view! I also know of several much less selective colleges that have high graduation rates because their admissions people do a good job of recognizing sleeping giants and making it happen.</p>
<p>I wonder what the US Department of Education standard is 6 years means. Is it a hard programmatic US DOE mandate or guideline that accredited colleges must follow or the average time it happens to take American students to get their degree? What kind of degree? A link to the info might be eye-opening.</p>
<p>What the 6-year thing means is basically when collecting graduation rate numbers, the 6-year graduation rate is typically what is considered the important statistic. Due to things like study abroad, part-time semesters due to internships or jobs used to fund college, gap years, etc, it’s too hard to say that not graduating in 4-years is a “bad” thing across the board. It’s generally thought that tacking on 2 more years can take into account things like gap years, study abroad, internships, etc, and just leave behind whether students are able to access the courses they need to graduate successfully, whether the university is bankrupting its students, and various other measures we may think have an effect on “dropout” rates.</p>
<p>I generally think the list looks that way because you have better financial aid policies combined with students who are really going to college because they want to rather than because they’re unsure what to do and don’t think they can get a job without college and it seems like the right thing to do. Basically, those schools do their best to make it affordable for everyone and have populations that are more inclined to take academics very seriously, head down in the trenches until they’re out, rather than decide after a year or two that school isn’t for them.</p>
<p>graduation rate 2007, retention rate after 1 year 2007, school, SAT midpoint 2001, SAT midpoint 2006</p>
<p>97 96 Harvard University 1485 1490
96 96 Amherst College 1415 1430
96 100 Yale University 1405 1490
95 98 Stanford University 1455 1440
95 97 Princeton University 1445 1480
95 97 Williams College 1410 1420
95 98 University of Pennsylvania 1400 1395
95 98 Brown University 1390 1440
95 97 University of Notre Dame 1355 1395
94 97 Swarthmore College 1445 1425
94 98 Pomona College 1440 1445
94 97 Duke University 1470
93 98 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1485 1470
93 98 Dartmouth College 1425 1450
93 96 Northwestern University 1380 1410
93 96 Georgetown University 1375 1390
93 98 Carleton College 1370 1410
93 96 Vassar College 1350 1375
93 96 Davidson College 1322.5 1345
93 97 University of Virginia-Main Campus 1315 1325
93 97 Columbia University in the City of New York 1440
92 96 Cornell University 1400 1385
92 97 Washington University in St Louis 1390 1450
92 94 Wesleyan University 1365 1395
92 96 Wellesley College 1345 1407.5
92 94 College of the Holy Cross 1230<br>
91 97 Haverford College 1365 1395
91 95 College of William and Mary 1325 1340
91 96 Vanderbilt University 1315 1370
91 96 Boston College 1305 1335
91 96 Middlebury College 1375
90 97 Rice University 1420 1430
90 96 Johns Hopkins University 1405 1380
90 98 University of Chicago 1400 1465
90 94 Colgate University 1320 1355
90 97 University of California-Los Angeles 1280 1290
89 98 California Institute of Technology 1520 1520
89 97 Claremont McKenna College 1360 1355
89 95 Washington and Lee University 1340 1385
89 94 Brandeis University 1335 1355
89 93 Bates College 1335<br>
89 94 Barnard College 1325 1365
89 96 Tufts University 1310 1410
89 94 Wake Forest University 1305 1320
89 94 Bucknell University 1285 1310
89 95 Lafayette College 1245 1290
89 94 Mount Holyoke College<br>
88 94 Emory University 1380 1385
88 96 Bowdoin College 1360 1390
88 97 University of California-Berkeley 1320 1335
88 96 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 1294 1315
88 93 Hamilton College 1280<br>
87 96 Carnegie Mellon University 1360 1395
87 94 Grinnell College 1345 1380
87 93 Colby College 1330 1350
87 90 Trinity College 1275 1300
86 94 Macalester College 1335 1355
86 96 Wheaton College 1315 1325
86 91 University of Richmond 1285 1265
86 95 Whitman College 1270 1320
86 90 Smith College 1265 1255
86 93 St. Olaf College 1255 1285
86 93 Gustavus Adolphus College 1200
85 96 University of Southern California 1305 1370
84 96 Harvey Mudd College 1465 1470
84 92 New York University 1325 1310
84 90 Bryn Mawr College 1290 1320
84 95 University of California-San Diego 1270 1260
84 91 Franklin and Marshall College 1270 1270
84 84 Yeshiva University 1205 1215
84 94 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus 1185 1200
83 95 Kenyon College 1280 1325
83 93 Lehigh University 1275 1305
83 96 Colorado College 1270 1310
83 90 Furman University 1265 1295
83 91 Dickinson College 1235 1285
83 91 St Mary’s College of Maryland 1220 1235
83 92 Muhlenberg College 1220
82 92 Oberlin College 1362 1365
82 92 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1315 1320
82 91 Boston University 1290 1275
82 91 Illinois Wesleyan University 1260 1260
82 94 Skidmore College 1235 1245
82 91 Syracuse University 1205 1225
82 90 College of Saint Benedict 1180 1130
82 93 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1285
81 91 Case Western Reserve University 1340 1330
81 96 University of Rochester 1315 1325
81 90 Connecticut College 1308 1320
81 95 University of Florida 1220 1250
81 91 Occidental College 1200 1285
81 91 Gettysburg College 1200 1280
81 87 DePauw University 1190 1225
80 92 Thomas Aquinas College 1260 1285
80 93 University of Maryland-College Park 1250 1280
80 87 Willamette University 1235 1260
80 89 Miami University-Oxford 1215 1205
80 89 Saint Johns University 1205 1172.5
80 91 University of California-Santa Barbara 1195 1200
80 90 Fordham University 1165 1195
80 94 University of California-Irvine 1160 1200
79 95 Scripps College 1265 1340
79 88 Lawrence University 1255<br>
79 88 Pepperdine University 1250 1240
79 87 Beloit College 1230 1270
79 94 Denison University 1210 1270
79 91 University of California-Davis 1175 1180
79 93 University of Wisconsin-Madison 1265
79 88 Wheaton College<br>
78 92 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 1335 1315
78 91 Kalamazoo College 1260 1305
78 90 George Washington University 1240 1295
78 87 Sewanee: The University of the South 1220 1225
78 92 The University of Texas at Austin 1210 1225
78 88 Hope College 1200 1200
78 82 Austin College 1195 1240
78 93 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 1185 1195
78 90 Clemson University 1185 1215
78 92 Texas A & M University 1180 1185
78 90 University of Delaware 1160 1195
78 88 Spelman College 1080 1080
78 84 Brigham Young University 1235
77 93 University of Georgia 1230 1230
77 92 Wofford College 1220 1200
77 90 SUNY at Binghamton 1190 1255
77 88 St Lawrence University 1140<br>
76 87 Tulane University of Louisiana 1325 1322.5
76 94 Worcester Polytechnic Institute 1265 1295
76 86 University of Puget Sound 1250 1235
76 85 Sarah Lawrence College 1250<br>
76 90 University of Miami 1190 1270
76 88 Clark University 1165 1200
76 84 Juniata College 1155 1175
76 89 Stevens Institute of Technology 1260
76 89 Bard College<br>
76 87 Augustana College<br>
75 91 Reed College 1330 1320
75 88 Ursinus College 1205 1220
75 84 Earlham College 1205 1225
75 90 University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus 1165 1230
75 92 University of Washington-Seattle Campus 1160 1210
75 89 Marquette University 1155 1195
75 93 University of Connecticut 1135 1190
74 86 University of Denver 1130 1180
74 91 Michigan State University 1125 1160
74 82 Saint Louis University-Main Campus 1190
73 88 Rhodes College 1295 1260
73 94 Centre College 1250 1235
73 86 American University 1210 1270
73 90 Rutgers University-New Brunswick 1180 1195
73 86 The College of Wooster 1180 1210
72 87 Southwestern University 1225 1230
72 91 Knox College 1220<br>
72 86 Baylor University 1175 1205
72 89 Indiana University-Bloomington 1095 1120
71 81 Drew University 1210 1170
71 94 Pitzer College 1205 1230
71 88 Wabash College 1190 1171.5
71 80 Birmingham Southern College 1190 1170
71 87 Allegheny College 1185 1210
71 92 Ohio State University-Main Campus 1175 1200
71 89 Southern Methodist University 1165 1230
71 86 Hobart William Smith Colleges 1155 1170
71 84 Albion College 1150 1205
71 83 Presbyterian College 1125 1120
71 75 Sweet Briar College 1115.5 1107.5
69 81 Millsaps College 1195 1155
69 80 Agnes Scott College 1185 1197.5
69 85 Purdue University-Main Campus 1135 1135
69 68 Hollins University 1130 1120
68 84 Ohio Wesleyan University 1210 1187.5
68 89 University of California-Santa Cruz 1145 1160
68 80 Virginia Military Institute 1130 1125
67 78 Goucher College 1195 1195
67 85 University of Missouri-Columbia 1185 1185
67 83 University of Colorado at Boulder 1165 1170
66 86 Hendrix College 1230 1235
66 85 Iowa State University 1205 1215
66 83 University of California-Riverside 1065 1075
66 83 University of Iowa 1190
63 86 Auburn University Main Campus 1105 1125
63 88 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 1240
59 77 Hanover College 1135 1195
58 84 The University of Tennessee 1085 1160
57 76 Bennington College 1195 1205
57 74 Mills College 1140 1100
56 87 New College of Florida 1340 1340
52 72 Randolph-Macon College 1094 1080
51 75 Wells College 1125 1105</p>
<p>The correlation between graduation rate 2007 and SAT midpoint 2001 is +.79, which is very high. The correlation between retention rate 2007 and SAT midpoint 2006 is +.78. The correlation between graduation rate and retention rate is +.84. All very highly correlated.</p>
<p>Btw, the difference in my list and collegehelp’s is I believe I had 2006 data. Thanks for that post CH.</p>
<p>While they’re highly correlated, do you think that either graduation rate or first-year retention is more interesting than the other? I’m inclined to say there are more “positive” pressures on time that are likely to come into play with the graduation rate that are less likely to come into play with retention. That being said, that’s a pretty high correlation between the two.</p>
<p>That’s great. Now I think to get to my point, the next step is to excise the most selective schools out of the calculation and compute the correlation anew?</p>
<p>The correlation between graduation rate and SAT midpoint for the top 30 schools in terms of SAT is +.19 but restricting the true range of scores limits variability and causes a statistical problem. For the top 60 schools, the correlation is +.42 and for the bottom 60 schools the correlation is +.42. The lower correlation is due to the restricted range and lower variability. Restricted range does not reflect the true relationship between these variables. If I sampled 500 schools instead of 200, the correlation might be around +.9.</p>
<p>Retention rate and graduation rate are both important but they reflect somewhat different things. Retention rate results from factors that cause a student to drop out right away. Graduation rate reflects all the forces that effect retention rate plus factors that come into play during the second and third year, like the difficulty of upper-level courses, change in career interests, debt burden, and so on.</p>
<p>Ok. I’m totally satisfied with the math!</p>
<p>CH your last remark is why I think the graduation rate deserves more consideration than it seems to get in the CC college search discussions.</p>
<p>It is interesting to note the outliers in your list. 92 94 College of the Holy Cross 1230, in comparison to its neighbors, is a standout because while it may appear easier from an SAT point of view, it has that handsome 90+ graduation rate. What I dont get about Holy Cross is that while their SAT requirement is so modest, I know some truly great kids whose first choice was Holy Cross, if anything, they were over-credentialed academically and otherwise, but were soundly rejected.</p>
<p>Conversely, 84 96 Harvey Mudd College 1465 1470 has an SAT rating as high or higher than Amherst, Stanford, Williams, Brown, Notre Dame, Swarthmore, Pomona, Duke and MIT, yet has a graduation rate no better than F&M. I must say I have a newfound respect for whomever drives that Saab at my workplace with the Harvey Mudd bumper sticker!!!</p>
<p>Schools with a religious affiliation seem to have a higher graduation rate than you would expect based on selectivity. Public schools seem to have an advantage because students don’t face the same debt, although Penn State’s grad rate seems strangely high. Tech schools like Harvey Mudd have a tougher curriculum. Swarthmore is known for tough grading standards. Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning has a much lower grad rate than the rest of Cornell, for some reason. And so on…</p>
<p>When you hold selectivity constant, these are the factors that lead to different grad rates.</p>