<p>You hear a lot about Freshman to sophomore retention rate. What is the typical retention rate from freshman to senior; ie, Duke engineering a few years ago was 50% (I know someone who graduated and said his class started at 400 and 200 were graduated). Is Duke a typical weed-out school?</p>
<p>Yeah, 50% is a good rule of thumb.</p>
<p>Colleges that are more selective will have a higher graduation rate but that is more because they only admit students who are more likely to suceed.</p>
<p>Colleges that admit most everyone will have a lower graduation rate because they are admitting far more students that may not be prepared for college.</p>
<p>Also, don’t, in general, engineering and technical school tend to have a higher graduation rate because everyone is working hard together?</p>
<p>You consider 50% high? NEU for example, has a 95% freshman to sophomore retention rate just at the college of engineering alone. What would your opinion be for NEU, then?</p>
<p>Well for starters, freshman-to-sophomore retention is different than freshman-to-senior. Most engineers, in my experience, drop out during sophomore or junior year when the classes are the roughest.</p>
<p>50% overall retention does seem to be about average for that statistic.</p>
<p>I agree with boneh3ad. 50% is consistent with everything that I have seen and on par with my undergrad class. Practically every engineering program will weed students out. This is not just a charactaristic of Duke.</p>
<p>50% is about right. If a program has 95% retention I’d guess that there’s either creative accounting taking place or the program is very easy. The only other way is if the school is very small and hard to get in to.</p>
<p>The Duke engineers probably just changed majors.</p>
<p>I think most people that leave engineering just change majors. I don’t personally know many people who completely dropped out of school from engineering, but I know plenty that went to Business or something.</p>
<p>Either way they’re out of engineering so they ‘dropped’ it.</p>
<p>Ok, so to those of you who think 50% is a good rule of thumb - why? Does anyone have any specific examples of kids you know - what branch of engineering were they in and why did they leave and what school they were at? Is is more that the material is extremely difficult or do you think if enough time was put in the students would be able to pull a B. </p>
<p>Also, how does civil or mechanical or industrial compare to ee or chemical? I would think that the last two would be much harder and you would see more of the drop outs there. </p>
<p>I would think that a lot of the sciences would be just as if not more difficult than engineering - are the drop out rates high there too (ie, bio).</p>
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Yes, but it isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm if they just switched to another major.</p>
<p>Concerned123, why do you think that ee or chemical are much harder than mechanical? I can tell you that my ME undergrad class was more than cut in half from freshman year. As I’ve said before on here, everything is relative. If you hate chemistry, then cheme will be very difficult but if you hate mechanics for instance, ME will be very difficult. </p>
<p>To answer the question as to why so many drop out of engineering, the simple answer is because engineering is very difficult. The course requirements (and the difficulty of these courses) is well beyond practically any other major out there. Students that are not willing to put in a lot of effort typically don’t last very long in engineering.</p>
<p>noimagination: In my major I know of at least a dozen people who dropped out of engineering, and all but one stayed at the university. Every single one of them left because they were struggling. People generally do not transfer out of engineering if they are doing well. Even outside of my major I only know of two people that dropped out of engineering even though they were doing well. One had some huge religious epiphany and decided to become an army chaplain, and one transferred to English where he’d wanted to be all along but his parents wouldn’t let him.</p>
<p>So I guess the question is - how many of the students that you know that left engineering were putting in the correct amount of effort. I’m hearing from your comment that kids who leave engineering typically don’t put enough effort in. </p>
<p>I’m going into engineering and quite frankly this is a little scary to hear. I’m willing and planning to work hard but if it is going to be so unrealistically difficult I’m worried that any amount of effort won’t be enough. I’d like to believe that if I work hard I will succeed. I’m not hearing that here.</p>
<p>The vast majority of people who drop out in my experience are those who aren’t willing to put the effort in. This may be because they are unable or that the effort required for them is greater than average and they feel they can’t do it, or more commonly, they realize that they don’t like engineering enough to justify the huge commitment.</p>
<p>If you’re not successful then you aren’t putting in the correct amount of effort. That amount of effort is different for every person though. You’ll almost certainly see a few guys that can get better grades than you with far less effort, but what you’re less likely to notice are the people that are putting far more effort in than you are and making similar or worse grades. People that are doing better than you stick out more.</p>
<p>The problem a lot of freshman have is that they coasted through high school, barely ever had to study except maybe for AP classes, and didn’t have the freedom to spend their time any way they liked like they do now, and when things get tough they don’t necessarily notice until it’s too late and they’re looking at a failing grade on half their midterms. Their first reaction is either anger at the professors or saying they must not be smart enough for engineering, so they transfer out. If you already realize that college is going to take a lot more effort and that you may hit bumps in the road that just mean you need to put more time into that class then you’re probably going to be fine.</p>
<p>Thanks for your input (last two posts). That’s really what I wanted to know are these drop-outs due to inability to handle the material despite the appropriate effort being made? I’m sure there are some, but that shouldn’t be the majority - otherwise there is something drastically wrong w/how the college selects their students. Lack of effort by the student is one thing; lack of ability is a whole different ballgame. If a student works hard and wants it - they should be able to handle the work load if the college is doing its job on selecting students for the program.</p>
<p>probably 4 times out of 5, if a student likes engineering, he/she is capable of putting the work in to successfully finish the degree. There are always exceptions, but this is usually the case from what I have seen.</p>