<p>Only if somebody is going to handhold him/her through life.</p>
<p>Bflo:</p>
<p>In general, I would conclude that more hand-holding is available at a LAC than at a Uni, particularly public Unis. That being said, my D attend a mid-sized Uni and I’m amazed at the hand-holding that exists there. Thus, it depends on the culture of the school.</p>
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<p>Not true. The 6-year graduation rate used by US News comes straight from the Common Data Set. The methodology used there is as follows:</p>
<p>Line 1: enter the total number of first-time, full-time bachelors degree-seeking undergraduates entering in the 2002 cohort.
Line 2: of the initial 2002 cohort, enter the number who did not persist and did not graduate for the following reasons: death, permanent disability, service in the armed forces, foreign aid service of the federal government, or official church missions (= total allowable exclusions)
Line 3: final 2002 cohort, after adjusting for allowable exclusions (subtract line 2 from line 1)
Line 4: of the initial 2002 cohort, how many completed the programs in four years or less?
Line 5: of the initial 2002 cohort, how many completed the program in more than four years but in five years or less?
Line 6: of the initial 2002 cohort, how many completed the program in more than five years but in six year or less?
Line 7: total graduating within 6 years (add lines 4, 5, and 6)
Line 8: six year graduation rate for 2002 cohort (divide line 7 by line 3).</p>
<p>As you can see, students transferring to another institution would remain in the denominator, insofar as “transfer to another institution” is not an “allowable exclusion.” </p>
<p>The Common Data Set requires schools to repeat this exercise for 3 consecutive cohorts. US News takes the average of those 3 consecutive six-year graduation rates and publishes it as the school’s “average six-year graduation rate.”</p>
<p>For all we know, 10% or 20% of the students who start out at UC Riverside could be transferring to UCLA, Berkeley, or UCSD and finishing their degrees there, essentially treating Riverside as a big community college. They’d show up in UC Riverside’s initial freshman cohort and therefore end up in its denominator for purposes of calculating its graduation rate, thereby depressing its published graduation rate—even though most people, myself included, would want to count those cases as educational successes if they graduate. But Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD wouldn’t get credit for graduating them either, as there’s nowhere to plug graduating transfer students into the Common Data Set graduation rate formula. The CDS/USNews graduation rate methodology presumes one model of higher education—you enroll in one college and stay there for 4 years or as long as it takes to graduate. This, in my opinion, is hugely unfair to the big public systems, in which transfers within the system (e.g., from a less prestigious but less costly campus closer to home where you do your first two years of general coursework before moving up and out to the flagship for advanced work and/or specialization not available at your local second-tier public) and transfers into the system from community colleges are central features of the higher education system. They get penalized for the transfers out, but they don’t get recognized for the transfers in, and the resulting data create the misleading impression that thousands of students are “dropping out” when in fact many of those students are doing just fine and graduating, thank you, often by moving up to more prestigious institutions partway through their undergraduate careers. Just one of many small but cumulatively significant ways in which the US News ranking methodology is systematically biased in favor of elite private institutions and against publics.</p>
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Will he really need all the hand holding? Don’t forget that he’s just a HS soph right now and will likely have a decent maturing escalation by the time he graduates HS and especially once he starts college (the mindset can change in that summer). It can be quite surprising, especially to parents, how many of the students step up to the responsibility. You know your S as he is now but keep the above in mind. </p>
<p>The UCs are large with lots of students but I think a reasonable approach is that if the student is successful enough to get admitted in the first place, especially to the more competetive ones, they can likely handle signing up for classes, seeking the advice of the counselors regarding which classes to take if necessary, and seeking out help from the profs if needed. There are all types of individuals at these universities including plenty of quiet, shy, and even socially awkward students but they generally seem to manage just fine. It’s a good time for the student to take on the responsibility. </p>
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There can be many reasons for this including the financial aspect that the UCs can be more affordable to stay longer at vs. a full-pay private so some students will be more likely to stay just because they can. Other reasons include switching majors, and the UCs have lots of majors to offers compared with much smaller colleges, and the decision to take on certain more difficult minors. Certain more rigorous majors, such as engineering, may have the student more likely to go over while some other majors, such as history, poliSci, etc. can be completed by many in less than 4 years given AP credits and the student taking a full load of courses rather than a lightweight load.</p>
<p>Bluebayou-- can you name your D’s school? :)</p>
<p>bclintonk – Thanks. My question wasn’t intended to be hostile. I knew there were exclusions from the denominator, and I always thought they included transfers (which really ought to be excluded, I agree). I have the same problem with high school dropout rates, which are essentially uncorrectable not only for voluntary school switches, but also for families moving (a not infrequent aspect of American culture).</p>
<p>Time to graduate – My information is pretty old at this point, but a friend who was Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Economics Department at Berkeley for a time said his main job was giving Kleenex to students who were being told that they couldn’t graduate in four years because they couldn’t get into required courses. This was in the 1980s. It wasn’t impossible to graduate in four years as an Econ major, but it required a lot of advance planning and some luck, or at least absence of bad luck. And it could be impossible as a practical matter to graduate in three or four semesters after switching majors. Some required courses were essentially limited to senior majors, and there still had to be a lottery to determine who could take them.</p>
<p>Of course, my sister had the major-switching problem at a private university when she switched from Geology to Spanish during her junior year. She could have completed the Spanish major in the time she had before normal graduation, but that would have required that she (or a counselor assisting her) focus more immediately on what she would need to graduate, and when those courses were offered. And that didn’t happen fast enough.</p>
<p>(Which wound up being a tremendous blessing in disguise. She had to take an extra term to complete one major requirement. The extra electives she took that term, and the part-time job she got then, became the foundations of a successful, lucrative career.)</p>
<p>bclintonk–thanks so much for explaining the methodology.</p>
<p>Bflogal–your son is a soph, and there will be lots of maturing that will go on in the next year or three (I have 2 S’s and speak from experience on this!) However, that said, it’s not uncommon for some kids to grow up on a different timetable and they can often use colleges that provide more counseling, personal relationships, etc. Smaller schools (LACs of course) do this very well. </p>
<p>The UCs are still among the best universities in the world (disclaimer–I teach at one of them 
) and I would not suggest to any student in the state to strike them from their list. Should your S become attracted to one, he may just grow into the challenge of succeeding there.</p>
<p>Bclintonk, if your son is a sophomore he doesn’t have to decide between LACs and UCs at this early date. </p>
<p>As the parent of a college freshman who <em>does</em> need handholding, I’m glad that my son is at an LAC. I don’t find barrons’ argument, that college students shouldn’t get extra help because it won’t be available later in life, remotely persuasive for my son. Kids mature at different rates. A colossal failure right now would not help my son mature faster.</p>
<p>The UCs are fantastic schools for many students. Other students do better at smaller, more intimate schools and would fall through the cracks at a UC.</p>
<p>It might. Failure is a great learning tool. Every successful person has had a major failure too.</p>
<p>ok, so I found this article, that has some of what some of what people are saying, but also kind of concurs with what your saying. <a href=“http://www.dailycal.org/2013/02/10/uc-berkeley-leads-in-graduation-rates-default-rates-despite-national-report/”>http://www.dailycal.org/2013/02/10/uc-berkeley-leads-in-graduation-rates-default-rates-despite-national-report/</a></p>
<p>Thread is 4 years old. Please use old thread for informational purposes only. closing thread.</p>