Do you consider frosh retention rate & 4-yr graduation rate?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Just wondering how many parents/students out there actually pay attention to these when deciding which colleges to apply to and/or attend. Here are published data for a few (random) schools--</p>

<p>SCHOOL/FROSH RETENTION RATE/4-YR GRAD RATE:</p>

<p>Dartmouth: 98%, 86.1%
UCLA: 97%, 64.8%
UT Austin: 90.0%, 43.8%
Creighton: 87%, 66.6%
Arizona State: 80%, 29.9%
Montana State: 72%, 17.3%
SOuthern Oregon Univ: 65%, NA</p>

<p>I assume the 4-yr grad rate can be low because students can't always get the courses they need. But if the % of freshmen returning is sort of low, say 70% or lower, that might be a red flag??</p>

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<p>I’m a parent, and I pay a lot of attention to these statistics. The colleges themselves would prefer to use a SIX-year graduation rate, and there are some good reasons for that, but I think most parents would prefer that their children graduate in four years. You have to at least ask “why so low?” especially if a school’s stats are lower than its peers. And yes, a low freshman retention rate is a red flag in my book.</p>

3

<p>I’d love to go to college for six years if it were free! I paid close attention to that for myself, and I also talked to people in my intended dept about their experience with getting into classes. So far, so good.</p>

4

<p>I think most of the people on here assume they (or their child) will make it through. We looked at those when we were doing initial research and flipping through the Fiske Guide, but rates did not affect applications or selection at all. Some of the ones you posted are pretty dramatic.</p>

5

<p>It can definitely be a red flag. You could have a university that takes in a lot of students into programs that they shouldn’t be in that do poorly their first year. UT Austin engineering is notoriously difficult and I could see a lot of students having a very hard time there first semester.</p>

<p>I think that the statistic is a red flag that should warrent further investigation. There can be different reasons for low 4-year rates and asking the school might provide a plausible explanation that you can live with.</p>

6

<p>I would also ignore the four-year grad rate for various good reasons (except that a really high four-year rate is excellent!), but indeed use the six-year and frosh rates. At some schools a low four-year rate is because of overcrowding, at others it can be due to the culture of taking time off in the middle, especially at really intense schools.</p>

7

<p>With freshman retention rate, be careful when applying it to specialized schools or schools with specialized programs. I know when I was applying to Smith for example, I was surprised that the retention rate was lower than that of other schools I’ve looked at (no idea what it currently is), but that’s because attending a women’s college is a very specialized experience and it doesn’t suit everybody or doesn’t always suit them as well they think it will</p>

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<p>How do they calc the 4 year grad rate and is this calculation consistent between schools? Do transfer students figure into the equation or is it just those who started freshman year?</p>

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<p>Four year graduation could also be misleading, as students doing a co-op program or studying abroad may not graduate in four years.</p>

<p>Would you consider a lot of 5 year BS/MS students a negative for a school?</p>

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<p>^^ This consistent way (from the Common Data Set):

</p>

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<p>I didn’t place a great deal of importance on that statistic. Freshman retention to me was more telling than the amount of time it took since so many factors comprise the path and time it takes kids to complete colleges. The freshman retention rate to me seemed the more “interesting” datapoint.</p>

12

<p>Unlike some of the other posters, I believe that 4-year grad rates are extremely important. Getting in and then through college is expensive. Who wants to be on the hook financially for more than 8 semesters? </p>

<p>Of course, one can’t take the data completely at face value as investigations need to be made to understand what’s behind a lower rate of graduation, but I think that this is an element in the college search process that merits greater attention. </p>

<p>Below is the four-year graduation data from the USNWR online. Pretty impressive performance by the LAC group which I would interpret to mean that it is less likely that one is going to fall thru the cracks at these colleges. </p>

<p>4-Year Grad Rate , National University</p>

<p>91% , Notre Dame
90% , Princeton
90% , Yale
90% , Georgetown</p>

<p>88% , Harvard
88% , U Penn
88% , Duke
88% , Boston College
87% , Columbia
87% , Cornell
86% , U Chicago
86% , Dartmouth
86% , Northwestern
86% , Tufts
86% , Brandeis
85% , Wash U
85% , U VIRGINIA
84% , Brown
84% , Vanderbilt
83% , Wake Forest
82% , MIT
82% , Emory
82% , Rice
82% , WILLIAM & MARY
81% , Caltech
81% , Johns Hopkins</p>

<p>79% , Stanford
77% , NYU
76% , George Washington
75% , U N CAROLINA
75% , Fordham
74% , U Rochester
74% , Boston University
74% , Pepperdine
72% , Lehigh</p>

<p>70% , Carnegie Mellon
70% , U MICHIGAN
70% , Syracuse
70% , Worcester
69% , USC
67% , U DELAWARE
65% , UCLA
64% , UC BERKELEY
64% , U ILLINOIS
64% , Rensselaer
64% , UC S BARBARA
64% , U Miami
63% , U MARYLAND</p>

<p>60% , PENN STATE
59% , Tulane
59% , SMU
58% , Case Western
57% , UC IRVINE
57% , U PITTSBURGH
56% , UC SAN DIEGO
56% , U FLORIDA
56% , U CONNECTICUT
53% , UC S CRUZ
52% , VIRGINIA TECH
51% , U WISCONSIN
51% , U WASHINGTON
51% , U GEORGIA
51% , INDIANA U</p>

<p>50% , CLEMSON
49% , RUTGERS
48% , U TEXAS
47% , UC DAVIS
47% , MICHIGAN ST
45% , Yeshiva
42% , OHIO STATE
41% , TEXAS A&M
41% , U MINNESOTA</p>

<p>40% , U IOWA
38% , PURDUE
31% , GEORGIA TECH
31% , BYU</p>

<p>4-Year Grad Rate , LAC</p>

<p>92% , Davidson
92% , Holy Cross
91% , Williams
91% , Haverford
90% , Pomona
90% , Carleton
90% , Claremont McK</p>

<p>89% , Wesleyan
89% , W&L
88% , Swarthmore
88% , Middlebury
87% , Vassar
87% , Colgate
86% , US Naval Acad
86% , Lafayette
85% , Amherst
85% , Hamilton
85% , Bates
85% , Bucknell
85% , Kenyon
85% , Whitman
84% , Wellesley
84% , Bowdoin
84% , Colby
84% , Macalester
83% , Harvey Mudd
83% , Smith
82% , Barnard
82% , U Richmond
82% , Occidental
81% , Grinnell
81% , Bryn Mawr
81% , Trinity</p>

<p>80% , Furman
79% , Mt. Holyoke
79% , Scripps
78% , Colorado College
77% , US Military Acad
73% , Sewanee</p>

<p>69% , Oberlin
68% , Bard </p>

<p>I would agree with those posting on retention rates as a potential red flag. IMO, anything below 85% or maybe even 90% warrants inspection.</p>

13

<p>“Who wants to be on the hook financially for more than 8 semesters?”</p>

<p>You mean more than eight consecutive semesters. Taking a break (to work) can make it cost net less. That’s why it’s important to know why, what the culture of the school contributes to the reasons for graduation delay.</p>

14

<p>It’s not something we’ve paid attention to initially, but will factor into the final decision.</p>

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<p>Yes, Vossron, it’s hard to make generalizations regarding when and how those semesters happened in a 5 or 6 year graduation scenario. I would think it would be false to assume that 100% of those 5 and 6 year kids were in college taking a full load for the entire 5 or 6 years.</p>

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<p>We definitely paid attention to it when DD was looking for a school.</p>

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<p>we have recently eliminated certain schools off of my junior daughter’s list based on the freshman retention rate and the 4 yr graduation one…</p>

<p>just so you know, northeastmom posted a link to a great resource to examine these numbers on the 3.0-3.3 thread…I couldn’t find it to post here but if someone wants to search it’s there…I think it was posted sometime between Dec 20th and Jan 1st…</p>

18

<p>We did not consider those rates at all. I don’t doubt both my kids will finish college in 4 years because that was always the clear expectation, and now in their second year there is no reason to believe it will be otherwise. (They have a very organized mother who knows exactly what they need to be doing when in order to accomplish this, and they are exceedingly cooperative with that effort. ;))</p>

<p>So what other students do or don’t do isn’t a concern of mine. Especially at publics, those rates have a great deal to do with the economics of going to college and the fact that many students have to work. I don’t hold having more working students against a school.</p>

<p>There may be other reasons students don’t return, but those seem to be a matter of failing to do the proper research ahead-of-time and picking the wrong school in terms of an academic, social, and/or financial fit, or the kinds of unforeseen things that can happen to anybody, or just a student who’s not ready to be there for whatever reason.</p>

<p>So, no, we didn’t look at those things. We just looked at our kids and the specific programs and social/creative/etc. culture of the schools they were interested in, and the availability of classes, professors and other activities that would enrich their experience there. What other people do isn’t so much a concern of mine.</p>

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<p>Actually, just thought of another group after looking at that list of schools. Some programs are actually designed as 5 year programs. I just checked, and the school of architecture at my alma mater was a five year program, with them making up roughly 4-5% of our student body.</p>

<p>I think you’d be much better off asking professors/students in the particular departments your child is interested in than relying upon global stats for a school.</p>

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<p>rent,
Part of the calculation/investigation that one could do in follow-up to seeing a low 4-year rate is see how much of this is driven by the institution itself. Unfortunately, there are many, many, many stories of students being unable to get the classes that they need to graduate on time. This is particularly true for students who make a change of majors. I’m not looking to knock a school based on family finances, but much more often than it should, the fault lies with the structure of the college and the reality is that often there’s not a darn thing you can do about it.</p>