<p>I just spoke to S's HS guidance counselor who said that the dropout rate for UC students who enter as freshmen is a whopping 50%! Yikes! She followed that by saying the dropout rate for UC students who transferred in from a jr college is nominally zero.</p>
<p>Has anyone heard the same-- or different? I was shocked by the 50%!</p>
<p>Your GC is misinformed. The top UCs have graduation rates in the 80-90+% range. The lowest UC (riverside, santa cruz) might be at 50%.</p>
<p>If it were true, I’m not surprised.</p>
<p>Insider’s Guide listing for Riverside says there’s an 83% retention rate, 39% 4-year graduation rate, and a 63% 6-year graduation rate. Santa Cruz is similar, with a slightly better 4-year grad rate. UCLA’s numbers are 97%, 64%, 87%.</p>
<p>Why is the GC so heavily promoting the community college transfer path? It’s a great option for students who can’t afford four years of UC or who didn’t have the GPA needed. It’s also a consideration for students who didn’t get into one of the more selective UCs, and know that the odds of transferring to e.g. UCLA are better from a CC than from another UC. The dropout rate fearmongering is silly.</p>
<p>Was this statement meant to suggest going to CC instead of straight to UC? Because it’s an easier life adjustment spending 2 more years at home? Otherwise, I’m not understanding the value of this point to any 1 individual - dropout rates and financial situations have to do with each individual student, not the environment of a UC school vs that of a CC.</p>
<p>Drop out rate 50% for freshmen at UC schools? …No WAY! If it were, the CA taxpayers would be screaming. (And if it were true, it would be easy to transfer in as a sophomore, and it isn’t.)</p>
<p>I think the counselor may be confusing the figure that about half of California’s college freshmen need some kind math or English help before they can take Freshmen English Comp or Calculus. And, the taxpayers do scream about that every year when those numbers are published in the papers.</p>
<p>As for the graduation numbers…
How do the stats handle the situations where a student may start out at one UC, but then transfer to another UC (or other 4 year college) and graduate. Does that count as a “drop out”? I don’t think it should count as a “drop out,” since the student did graduate and not “drop out.” We don’t count high school kids who move to another school as a “drop out.”</p>
<p>And…using the CC figures is silly…a CC transfer is a junior, not a freshmen. To be “fair,” you’d have to compare CC freshmen dropout rates with UC freshmen dropout rates.</p>
<p>Just one more example of GCs not knowing what they’re talking about…some are great, but some just talk thru their hats!</p>
<p>Well the 4 year graduation rates are truly pathetic, she might be confused and using those.</p>
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<p>The CA taxpayers have so much to scream about with what’s happening to the kids still there!</p>
<p>My Quote:
If it were, the CA taxpayers would be screaming. </p>
<p>hmom5 Quote: The CA taxpayers have so much to scream about with what’s happening to the kids still there! </p>
<p>Yes, yes, yes! But, if 50% of UC freshmen were dropping out (assuming roughly across all UCs), then imagine the screams from the kids who wanted to go to UCLA or Berkeley and didn’t get in. Then, a VERY short time later (one short year), 50% dropped out! </p>
<p>If it were true, you’d have a bunch of rising sophomores (who didn’t get into their first choice UC) begging to be let into one of the spots.</p>
<p>Not even close. These figures are reported in US News under the heading “average freshman retention rate,” i.e., the percentage of entering freshmen who return for their sophomore year.</p>
<p>Here are the figures:
UC Berkeley 96.5%
UCLA 97%
UCSD 94.2%
UC Davis 90.2%
UC Santa Barbara 90.5%
UC Irvine 93.5%
UC Santa Cruz 89.2%
UC Riverside 84.8%</p>
<p>No data yet on UC Merced.</p>
<p>Now the figure for Riverside is troubling—it’s not good if 15% of your freshmen aren’t making it through their first year, or not returning for their second. And Santa Cruz, Davis, and Santa Barbara are only a little better. But the top UCs are just fine. And even the worst of these schools are nowhere near 50%.</p>
<p>Of course, the US News figures are based on data that is now several years old. It could be that with huge hikes in fees and lots of families in severe financial difficulties, these rates have gone up. I doubt it’s anywhere near 50%, though, and if there has been a big change recently it’s due to the economy, not the educational system per se.</p>
<p>BfloGal:</p>
<p>If I were you I’d ask the GC to show you the actual numbers for either the UCs your S might be interested in or just for the top 3 (UCLA, UCSD, UCB). Clearly the stats won’t support her statement. Unfortunately this means that you’ll need to question anything else that GC states regarding colleges and not depend much on that GC’s advice. It’s unfortunately not that unusual for some HS GCs to be uninformed or misinformed about colleges and the result can be either non-counseling or incorrect counseling. If the GC goes through the process to find the actual numbers (maybe with your guidance!), she might learn something and be more productive in her counseling.</p>
<p>Here’s the link for UCLA for the years freshman 2007 to sophomore 2008 (look at the bottom number - Retention Rate - 97%)
[UCLA</a> Office of Analysis and Information Management | AIM](<a href=“http://www.aim.ucla.edu/cds/cdsformB.asp]UCLA”>http://www.aim.ucla.edu/cds/cdsformB.asp)</p>
<p>check out UC statfinder. You’ll find that your GC was making up stories.</p>
<p>According to OP, the GC said the dropout rate was 50% of those starting UCs as freshmen–not the retention rate (Fresh to Soph). GC said of those transferring as juniors from CC, none drop out. I find those figure hard to believe anyway, but I also don’t know if there is a way to track total % of frosh who drop out over the course of their years. </p>
<p>Another question, when US News lists % graduate in 4 yrs, do they include transfers?</p>
<p>The graduation rates are different from drop-out rates. They measure how many of the freshmen eventually got a degree from that institution. Students who transfered out are not counted as graduated, and students who transfered in are not reflected in this number as well. I agree that Riverside’s 64% graduation rate is low, but I would guess that many of the other 36% transfered. 16% of the freshmen don’t return for their sophomore year, and it is more likely that they transferred than that they dropped out of college completely after a year. That already accounts for 16% of the 36%. If another group of students transfers after their sophomore year, a big junk of the 36% is accounted for by transfers rather than drop-outs. Not that a high transfer rate reflects well on a college either…</p>
<p>Below are the verbatim instructions for reporting graduation rates on the Common Data Set.</p>
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The freshman retention rate for fall 2007 was 79.1%.</p>
<p>I don’t know where she is getting these numbers[ sounds like she made them up] , but she does not know what she is talking about! If I were you I would push to get another more knowledgeable GC as hard as I could. Yikes!</p>
<p>madbean has it right-- it’s not the retention rate (freshman to sophomore), but the overall dropout rate across the system for students who entered as freshmen that the GC was stating. I confess I don’t know where the GC got those stats (and I didn’t know where to look to confirm), so I wanted to see what the experts on CC had to say. The GC said this in the context of telling my S (HS sophomore) that the UC schools are big and the student has to take responsibility for his own learning (something we are wrestling with in HS-- but that’s a topic for another thread…) ;)</p>
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<p>Well, even on that measure the GC is wildly off base. Here are the 6-year graduation rates for the UCs. Anyone who graduates within 6 years from the same school he started at can’t possibly be considered to have “dropped out.” Notice also, however, that the 6-year graduation rate excludes kids who start at one school, transfer, and finish at another school. These kids aren’t “dropping out” either. So the “dropout rate” would be some figure less than 100% minus the 6-year graduation rate, i.e., LESS THAN 10% at Berkeley, LESS THAN 11% at UCLA, and so on.</p>
<p>6-year graduation rate (per US News):</p>
<p>UC Berkeley 90%
UCLA 89%
UCSD 85%
UC Davis 81%
UCSB 87%
UC Irvine 81%
UC Santa Cruz 76%
UC Riverside 68%</p>
<p>Now some of these numbers aren’t stellar–not only at Riverside and Santa Cruz, but the Irvine and Davis numbers are also disturbingly low (but not out of line with those qat similarly-ranked institutions). But they’re nowhere near 50%. And we don’t know how many of the 32% who start at Riverside and don’t finish there are simply transferring and finishing at another school.</p>
<p>I think you need a new GC. This is a breathtakingly ill informed and reckless statement</p>
<p>Your GC was most likely speaking of the FOUR-Year graduation rate for matriculating Frosh which is in the middle 50 percentiles systemwide. But the six-year graduation rate for entering Frosh is in the 80’s systemwide. </p>
<p>Note, the mean elapsed time for a degree is 4.2 years again, systemwide. Note, however, that UC is extremely generous with AP/IB credits so graduating in less than 4 years is not uncommon. IMO, the biggest reason for the lower 4-year rate is the acceptance of a lot of low income kids; such kids have to work bcos UC finaid is poor, and since they work a lot of hours each week, they tend to take a minimal course load. </p>
<p>Sources: UC Statfinder.</p>
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<p>Absolutely true at every major Uni, not only the publics. Hand-holding is a specialty of LACs.</p>
<p>bluebayou-- your last statement aroused my curiosity-- generally, if a kid needs some handholding (this would be my kid), is he better off at an LAC?</p>
<p>Yes, if your kid would do better with some handholding, that’s a huge plus for the LAC path. It’s not that every kid at an LAC needs or wants handholding, but one of the promises an LAC can legitimately make is that no kid falls through the cracks there, and if a student needs extra attention to succeed, he will get it.</p>
<p>bclintonk: I always thought that the graduation rate statistics (unlike the retention rate) were adjusted for transfers, such that students who transfer out are taken out of the denominator. Not true?</p>