These are 6-year graduation rates for schools with at least an 80% graduation rate. Graduation rate is a very strong indicator of school quality. Also included SAT CR + Math midpoint which is strongly correlated with graduation rate.
From IPEDS data 2016.
98 1510 Yale University
97 1455 Dartmouth College
97 1515 Harvard University
97 1440 Pomona College
97 1495 Princeton University
96 1470 Brown University
95 1345 Davidson College
95 1475 Duke University
95 1445 University of Notre Dame
95 1475 University of Pennsylvania
94 1555 California Institute of Technology
94 1500 Columbia University in the City of New York
94 1430 Cornell University
94 1420 Georgetown University
94 1480 Northwestern University
94 1480 Stanford University
94 1418 Swarthmore College
94 1525 University of Chicago
94 1350 University of Virginia-Main Campus
94 1485 Washington University in St Louis
94 1435 Williams College
93 1458 Amherst College
93 1360 Boston College
93 1405 Claremont McKenna College
93 1500 Harvey Mudd College
93 1525 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
93 1388 Middlebury College
93 1490 Rice University
92 1430 Carleton College
92 1390 Hamilton College
92 1485 Johns Hopkins University
92 1445 Tufts University
92 1405 University of California-Berkeley
92 1390 University of Southern California
92 1505 Vanderbilt University
92 1390 Washington and Lee University
91 1370 Barnard College
91 1360 College of William and Mary
91 1395 Emory University
91 1315 University of California-Los Angeles
91 1405 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
91 1315 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
91 1415 Vassar College
91 1405 Wellesley College
91 1285 Wheaton College
90 1375 Brandeis University
90 1465 Carnegie Mellon University
90 1375 Colgate University
90 1420 Haverford College
90 1335 Kenyon College
90 1220 Soka University of America
90 1320 Villanova University
89 1175 Bentley University
89 1370 Colby College
89 1295 Lafayette College
89 1325 Lehigh University
89 1300 Santa Clara University
89 1225 Skidmore College
88 1290 Bucknell University
88 1375 Macalester College
88 1260 St Olaf College
88 1320 University of Richmond
88 1310 Whitman College
87 1320 Boston University
87 1220 Pepperdine University
87 1200 The College of New Jersey
87 1150 United States Coast Guard Academy
87 1195 University of California-Irvine
87 1310 University of California-San Diego
87 1275 University of Florida
87 1315 University of Maryland-College Park
86 1210 Centre College
86 1410 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
86 1425 Grinnell College
86 1420 Northeastern University
86 1195 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
86 1285 United States Military Academy
86 1285 United States Naval Academy
85 1160 DePauw University
85 1365 New York University
85 1350 Oberlin College
85 1190 University of California-Davis
85 1383 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
85 1310 University of Wisconsin-Madison
84 1005 College of Saint Benedict
84 1288 George Washington University
84 1205 Gonzaga University
84 1285 Ohio State University-Main Campus
84 1365 Scripps College
84 1240 University of Georgia
84 1245 University of Washington-Seattle Campus
84 1210 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
83 1270 Brigham Young University-Provo
83 1335 Bryn Mawr College
83 1315 Hillsdale College
83 1225 Loyola Marymount University
83 1225 Muhlenberg College
83 1135 Providence College
83 1380 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
83 1350 Stevens Institute of Technology
83 1315 SUNY at Binghamton
83 1325 Tulane University of Louisiana
83 1315 United States Air Force Academy
83 1170 University of Delaware
82 1385 Case Western Reserve University
82 1190 Elon University
82 1125 James Madison University
82 1285 Sarah Lawrence College
82 1190 Syracuse University
82 1250 Thomas Aquinas College
82 1255 University of California-Santa Barbara
82 1230 University of Connecticut
82 1300 University of Miami
82 1190 University of Portland
82 1225 Yeshiva University
81 1245 American University
81 1245 Clemson University
81 1193 Grove City College
81 1265 Illinois Wesleyan University
81 1155 Marquette University
81 1310 Occidental College
81 1195 SUNY College at Geneseo
81 1275 The University of Texas at Austin
81 1285 University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus
80 1255 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
80 1285 Denison University
80 1225 Emerson College
80 1195 Florida State University
80 1270 Fordham University
80 1230 Rutgers University-New Brunswick
80 1140 Saint Joseph’s University
80 1190 Texas A & M University-College Station
80 1160 Wofford College
I would say that a school with a much higher graduation rate than you would expect based on SAT scores MIGHT be guilty of grade inflation. Or, they might simply be doing a great job supporting the students who enroll. Interesting question, though. Not sure how to identify schools with grade inflation.
Graduation rate is more a measure of student quality and school selectivity than school “quality”. Those schools that have the best students and are very selective, tend to also be the “best” schools (which is why those schools got the best students and could be very selective in the first place).
That’s one reason US News also uses “Graduation rate performance”, which is a comparison between the actual six-year graduation rate for students and the predicted graduation rate. The predicted graduation rate is based upon characteristics of the entering class, as well as characteristics of the institution.
Some of the big publics give out their graduation rates per college if asked. Not generally well published though but there are times a specific college will have much higher outcomes than the university as a whole.
Many of those schools have few older students who have to take off semesters to work. Many are schools that have great financial aid for their students. They are selective so have students who are well prepared for the academic work, or may even have college credits for work already completed.
I have one daughter who graduate in 4 years. I have one who took a semester off to do an internship (no credits), and who changed majors a few times, and who is just a little slower in getting organized. I’m not sure she would have graduated in 4 years at any of those schools on the list. It’s her issue, not the college’s.
@twoinanddone that’s a 6 year grad rate list. Which accounts for situations like your D and for programs that are hard to finish in 4, and co-op programs.
The 4 year list is a little different, but not a lot.
When students do not graduate at highly selective colleges, it rarely relates to failing out with academic probation due to low grades and such. Instead it more often relates to pursuing programs that are expected to take more than 4 years to complete. For example, 3 colleges on the list have a high 1400+ SAT score, yet still have a relatively low graduation rate below 90%. Looking in to more detail, at these 3 schools, they all have good reasons for the lower graduation rate:
Northeastern – ~90% of students do a 5-year co-op program, so 6-year graduation rate is low
GeorgiaTech – Has largest voluntary co-op program in US, so 6-year graduation rate is low
Grinnelll – Median parent’s income is the 2nd lowest among top 20 LACs. Only Smith is slightly lower, which has a similar relatively low graduation rate (but was not listed in the initial post). As parent’s income decreases, students are more likely to need to take lower class loads while working or leave for financial reasons.
The same idea persists to a lesser extent at numerous other colleges on the list with a different graduation rate than expected. For example, HYP have a 97-98% graduation. Stanford is much lower at 94%. I believe the primary reason for the difference is ~35% of Stanford students pursue a 5-year co-terminal master’s program. Athletics (5-year redshirts) and the SV tech start-up culture also play a role.
Graduation rate by itself is not a measure of quality. Many high quality universities have “low” four year graduation rates. In engineering for example co-op programs, which by design are five years, are popular in many schools as noted by other posters. At Stevens Institute of Technology, which has one of the largest co-op programs among United States universities, half of the engineering, science, and business/quantitative finance students participate. If one is comparing the graduation rates of co-op students with “regular” four-year students, one must compare the five year rate of the co-op students to the four-year rate of non co-op students, otherwise, this is an invalid comparison (though the popular college guides typically publish only four and six year graduation rates, so extracting this information may be somewhat challenging).
Co-op students find that their experience working in a professional capacity for a year during their undergraduate education is extremely valuable in their post-graduation success. They enter into the program knowing it will take five years by design (they pay tuition only for four years). Their outcomes are often better than many four year graduates.
Graduation rate is part quality of student / selectivity of college. I think you can couple those two to form part of the recipe for a quality school. Can’t have a quality school without quality students. One serves the other.
The US Dept. of Education standard graduation rate is 150% of “normal” time to graduate. The 6-year rate does a very good job of capturing this standard even for schools with programs that require a semester of co-op or internship. I used the 6-year graduation rate, not the 4-year graduation rate. The 6-year graduation rate is an excellent indicator of quality because it captures on-time graduates of 5-year programs and because it is highly correlated with other measures of quality. I will admit that the exact equivalent grad rate for 5-year programs would be a 7.5-year graduation rate. There may be a very small percentage of students in 5-year programs who need more than 6 years to graduate.
@Data10 Why would a co-op impact the 6-year graduation rates? It explains low 4 year graduation rates, but 6 years should be fine for a co-op.
Georgia Tech’s 8-year graduation rate is only 2% higher than the 6 year rate.
(class beginning in 2008, we don’t have 8 year rates yet for 2010).
4-year:37%
6-year: 82% (note that the 6-year rate for the class of 2010 is 86%)
8-year: 84%
@rickle1 - SAT/ACT scores and high school GPA are more significant as measures of quality of the incoming students than the graduation rate of the college. Some students do not graduate from a particular college because they determine the college isn’t a good fit for them and transfer elsewhere for example. That has nothing to do with the quality of the institution. In my opinion the real figure of merit of a college is in the outcomes of the students as quantified in various objective surveys (for example, Bloomberg Business Week/Payscale “What’s Your College Degree Worth, 2018”). Selectivity too is not a measure of quality. It is measure of popularity, and colleges know how to play the games with statistics to make their selectivity appear higher than it actually is, to increase their ranking in surveys such as USNWR, for example.
@collegehelp - When you say that 6-year graduation rate is “highly correlated with with other measures of quality” you really need to provide the reference or studies that demonstrate that. Even if they do, correlation does not imply causation (the first thing one learns in Statistics 101).
I know two people, one a graduate of Harvard and another of Princeton in liberal arts (history and English, respectively). They are unemployed. All of my engineering colleagues who attended the state university for example have had solid careers. The popular perception is that Harvard and Princeton are “better” than Rutgers for example, but the outcomes suggest otherwise in many cases.
What may be useful in addition would be if colleges reported:
Percentage of students who graduated after 4 academic years of school (i.e. 8 semesters or 12 quarters or equivalent; summer sessions typically equal 0.5 semester or 1 quarter at semester and quarter schools respectively) within a 6 calendar year period after frosh entry (and 2 academic years of school after junior transfer entry).
Median number of academic years of school between frosh (and junior transfer) entry to graduation.
Expected numbers based on admission selectivity and mix of majors.
Counting only semesters or quarters in school avoids penalizing schools where co-ops and other semesters or quarters off school are common. Comparison with expectations based on admission selectivity and mix of majors removes the relatively large, but not-specific-to-the-school factors in graduation rates.
Interesting Engineer80, but this could just be an outlier ! “I know two people, one a graduate of Harvard and another of Princeton in liberal arts (history and English, respectively). They are unemployed. All of my engineering colleagues who attended the state university for example have had solid careers. The popular perception is that Harvard and Princeton are “better” than Rutgers for example, but the outcomes suggest otherwise in many cases.”
Is it possible to get data of the employment rate of Harvard alumni’s and other IVY’s for that matter.
Yes - employment data is generally available through a school’s career center. That was one of the items on my daughter’s college spread sheet. You can also find out starting salaries, which companies are the big recruiters and where in the country/world students are going. Some schools have better data than others but we had great luck finding the engineering stats. Here’s a link to what Cornell’s chem e post graduate report contains: http://cspot62-prod.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/upload/2016-ChemE-UG-Combined.pdf
MaineLonghorn,
Here is a link to the US Dept. of Education database. It contains a wealth of information but is very difficult to use properly. I select the schools to use in my data with Carnegie Classification Basic which is under Institutional Characteristics. I select only those schools that are Doctoral, Masters, or Baccalaureate colleges which includes about 8 or 9 Carnegie Classifications. You have to filter the schools this way or you get a lot of associate and for-profit schools rather than 4-year non-profit colleges. There is an enormous amount of data that spans up to 15 years. You can download the data as an Excel workbook which is what I do so I can calculate statistics and sort. https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/login.aspx?gotoReportId=1