<p>Jay Mathews' Washington Post column today talks about an online tool that can be accessed via the Education Trust website <a href="http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust%5B/url%5D">http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust</a> and I've been playing with it all morning. Really neat. Among other things, you can custom select a list of colleges and sort them by 4- 5- and 6-year graduation rates and demographics. While you can't sort, you can also list out various things like freshman retention rates, % of degrees awarded in different programs, etc. I loaded my sophomore S's "working list" of 25 schools in and went to town on creating a number of lists containing different variables.</p>
<p>Looks like fun, but site is very slow today - probably as a result of the Post column. I've bookmarked it for later. Oh good, just what I need - something else to occupy my time!!! But it's interesting to see the institutions that they show as most similar to the one you put in.</p>
<p>Interesting.</p>
<p>Neat! Some information there that's hard to find elsewhere, such as the percentage who transfer out. And, I was fascinated to discover that only TWO public universities (not counting the service academies) graduate more than 75% of students in 4 years:
William & Mary and UVA.</p>
<p>Probably just measured the economic status of their student bodies, the likelihood that a student would have to drop out to take care of a disabled mother, or younger siblings, or just ran out of money. Might have nothing to do with institutional quality (or the ability of the SCHOOL to make it possible for a student to graduate in four years whatsoever.)</p>
<p>Want to make a quick list of the schools that graduate the largest percentage of students in just four years? It's really simply to do: find those with the lowest percentage of Pell Grant recipients. Start with Harvard, go on to Davidson, and work your way down. There will be exceptions and anomalies, of course, but it works darn well.</p>
<p>Want to find out which groups are least likely to graduate from a state school? Simple. Take low-income groups with least in the way of family assets (not income, but assets.) (African-Americans, followed by Latinos.) Oh, what is the percentage of African-Americans and Latinos at William and Mary?</p>
<p>The percentage of AfAms at W&M is roughly 4.5%. Not sure about the Latino number. AfAms at UVA number roughly 8%. Again, not sure about Latino stat.</p>
<p>Now take a look at the same stats at comparable state universities (African-Americans on the east coast; especially Hispanics out west), and you'll quickly see they are much higher, and lower 4-year graduation rates are closely associated. It isn't about academic performance, and not necessarily about the school's efforts to make it possible to graduate in 4 or 5 years; it is much about being able to maintain an income that allows one to attend.</p>
<p>Mini, excellent point and very interesting. That is why the program is so useful and interesting because it allows you to sort out information quickly.</p>
<p>Mini, I agree with Carolyn that your point is well taken, and that's exactly why the Education Trust tool is helpful. By being able to sort and compare these schools based on Pell Grant recipients, URM's etc. it allows you to better compare apples to apples, compared to the the US News database that pretty much just spits out the graduation rates. It's certainly not perfect, but it's better than a lot of other information sources I've seen out there.</p>