<p>S2 currently has two financial safeties on his list. One is a large well-regarded in-state public flagship. The other is an smallish OOS public. Both are great schools and it's very possible he may end up at one of them. However, the graduation rates of both are a little worrisome.</p>
<p>The large in-state has a 4-year grad rate of 42% and a 6-year of 66%. The smaller OOS has a 4-year grad rate of 47% and a 6-year rate of 70%. When I compare this to some of his target and reach schools with 4-year rates that are in the mid 80s this is a little unsettling.</p>
<p>Am I making too much of this? Or do these low rates come with the territory of state/public schools? Does all of this really matter as much since S2 will probably come out of HS with around 21 credits?</p>
<p>I think it’s all a matter of priorities. I wouldn’t rule out a college because of that, but it would be something to investigate. Colleges that are inexpensive may have a low grad rate because students can afford to take their time graduating. They switch majors, take lighter loads, work and go to school, etc. I think my son’s school actually has a lowish grad rate, but when it came time to decide, that wasn’t a factor.</p>
<p>i agree with kathiep…when i looked at grad rate at son’s school it was low but i dug a little deeper and they had a data set…the percentage that graduated 4-6 yr was much much higher among students that entered with a higher gpa and act score. perhaps those with the lower entering scores, dropped out, or went to part time and job? It is also a very strong science school with a “pre med, pre-health profession” type student -…so another issue could be students changing majors and deciding medicine wasnt for them and transferring out. at my son’s school they also had only recently put computerized early warning and a freshman learning community with mentoring, so that would have affected numbers in previous years. Also in our state it is extremely easy to transfer within the state schools. So knowing what stats my son had, and the type of program he was looking at i felt good about the grad rate for someone with his stats.</p>
<p>I think its worth being concerned about, but its difficult to evaluate the statistics. It depends on who leaves and why. If your best students are transferring out, that’s not so hot. If your inferior students are dropping out or transferring, that’s not great either, but its different from the first situation.</p>
<p>I have spent most of my career working/teaching at schools with very low (state directional) to lowish (state flagships) grad rates. I’ve seen the same things repeated at every stop:</p>
<p>Well prepared students that have the financial and other support from family almost always graduate in 4-5 years.</p>
<p>Students that have little or no financial and/or other support from family (or are underprepared for college) often drop in/out of school. Part-time one semester, full-time the next, work full-time so no classes the next, community college the next, etc, etc. This often leads to 6+ years from beginning to end. </p>
<p>I personally would not worry about it. I would be more concerned about a low return for year 2 rate.</p>
<p>Make sure you check that the students can get the classes they need when they need them. Our local U is known as “U Can’t Finish” because you can’t get the classes you need. Mostly anecdotal from talking to students, but then I just checked and its 4 year grad rate is 34%.</p>
<p>I would want to inquire about the reasons for the rates. If one reason is that the courses are scheduled such that it is often very difficult/impossible to get all the courses for one’s major in 4 years. that would concern me. We did encounter one such well-known/well-respected school.</p>
<p>This is the one reason why I’d be concerned about a low 4 year grad rate. To be on the financial safe side, I’d calculate the costs of a 5 year plan when comparing costs with a college that has a high 4 year grad rate.</p>
<p>Graduation rate is highly correlated with admission rates here is an article supporting this from SUNY schools. When they raised admission requirements, the grad. rate went up. So an individuals high schoo lGPA & SAT scores seem to be better predictors of an individual students chances of graduating, than the college they attend;</p>
<p>interesting article!! another thing is to carefully check those numbers and verify with the school… if using college websites those numbers can be very different site to site. I can remember finding differences of 15-20% or more for some colleges we looked at… one site might say 60%, another site said 40%.</p>
<p>we leaned towards bigger schools with large depts in son’s intended majors so that we could avoid the inability to get classes he needed in order to graduate. Honors college sometimes helps too as they often get priority registration for classes</p>
<p>Very common in large universities. The socioeconomic demographics are much more diverse than in a smaller school (especially the private schools). Those kids who come from stable backgrounds with the financial ability to attend school full-time are more likely to graduate within 4 years. For others, it can be very hard to do. I wouldn’t be overly concerned about it but checking on class availability is a good point.</p>
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<p>If I remember correctly, part of Malcolm Gladwell’s argument against the USNWR rating system was that using the predicted graduation rate as a key metric was somewhat faulty because you would expect to see a high graduation rate at the more selective schools. Those kids tend to be higher-achieving and have already invested a lot of time and energy getting into those schools, so it’s unlikely they are going to fail to graduate. So saying Harvard has a 87% graduation rate tells you almost nothing. You would expect Harvard to have a high 4 year graduation rate. </p>
<p>Whereas, Flagship U might only have a 65% graduation rate but given the average GPA/SAT score they are doing a darn fine job of getting kids through school because the statistics would suggest that only 50% would graduate in 4 years. I’m heavily paraphrasing here but that was the gist of it.</p>
<p>Bigger schools with large departments don’t always equate into good class availability. My son attended a medium/large school and was in a large relatively large department. He found that getting into the first of a sequence class was sometimes difficult. The first class acted as a gate and the subsequent ones in the sequence were available. Ended up taking him 5 years to graduate.</p>
<p>Department head discussed this issue at the parent welcome meeting his freshman year. Said the 4 year grad rate was 15% while the 5 year grad rate was 85%. He claimed that they were working to better the 4 year grad rate, but with budget cuts my son reported it was getting worse.</p>
<p>Son’s school was a CA state college. Tuition started off being somewhat cheap. It has been going up by leaps and bounds recently. Problem is tuition is only part of the problem. You have housing and food expenses, as well as an additional year of tuition costs, to deal with. You also have the year delay in starting your career or grad school.</p>
<p>Daughter was accepted to several CA state schools and an OOS private school. The private school, while definitely more expensive per year, offered her some decent scholarship money and their 4 year grad rate is quite good. I figured that the 4 year private was actually less money than the 5 year state school. She choose the private school and with all the tuition increases that are coming along, I’m glad she did.</p>
<p>Publics often have grad rate issues cuz some kids go part time or only take 12 credits per sem so they don’t graduate on time. However if your child will be taking a full load then no problem unless the schl has a rep for being difficult to get classes. </p>
<p>My kids and their friends go/went to a flagship and had no problems getting their classes and will/did graduate ontime.</p>
<p>Don’t know the numbers of part time students at my son’s school, but the impression is that it was very low. My son took less than a full course load only 2 quarters (out the the 15 he was there for) and one was his last quarter where he was completing his senior project, which had quickly turned into a time sink. So, when he graduated, he had a lot of extra credits in his field of study. I believe these were very helpful in his getting his first job as it made him a more attractive candidate.</p>
<p>School does a rep of having issues with class availablity, therefore the department head comments.</p>
<p>Was complaining a little, but more issuing a warning. You really do have to factor the grad rate into the cost of the college education.</p>
<p>One thing that you might find useful in getting accurate info on availability of classes is by talking to current students in a few potential majors your student is interested in (as these problems can vary a lot by major, department or school within the university). I’ve found looking for the executive committee of the major’s club is a great way to find current students who know what its really like. So for example, emailing the vice president of the Economics Club or the Social Coordinator for the Chemistry club. Try to ask very matter of factly or as positively as possible, maybe with other more positive framed questions so they don’t feel defensive (and therefore are more likely to give you a more accurate answer). I’ve found in general they love to answer questions and you can get great details this way.</p>
<p>Four-year graduation rates have been dropping at our state flagship as many students can’t get into the courses necessary to complete their majors. There have been significant cuts in upper-level undergraduate electives, and some freezing out of students trying to get into first-year classes as well.</p>
<p>Graduation rates are also heavily correlated with family income. Generally speaking (there are exceptions), schools with higher numbers of Pell Grant students will have lower graduation rates, usually because students are often called upon to assist with medical/financial difficulties in the family.</p>
<p>When we were looking for safeties, and I would suggest one, DD would say "oh but it doesnt have this: DW would say “I dont like that” Finally in frustration I said “THATS WHY ITS A SAFETY!” </p>
<p>I mean CC says love your safety, and some folks are fortunate enough to have a safety they love, but for a lot of kids there IS going to be a compromise of some kind in the safety. Something really great about the safety one hopes, but also something thats a compromise.</p>
<p>When I went to university many years ago, the 4-year graduation rate was much lower than it is now. It did seem that there were a lot of “full time” students taking only 12 or 13 credit units per semester (as opposed to the average of 15 that one would take to graduate in 8 semesters). Perhaps because costs were so much less then, there was less incentive for students to avoid delays in graduation.</p>
<p>There have been other changes, some due to deliberate school policy (curriculum changes, student course registration procedures), and some due to external factors (greater popularity resulting in greater admissions competition resulting in entering freshmen with more AP credit and less need for remedial courses), which also likely helped improve 4-year graduation rates (the school wants students to graduate as quickly as possible – an extra semester for an in-state student means an additional semester of in-state tuition subsidy).</p>
<p>The OOS safety does have a number of 5-year preprofessional programs so that might be throwing things off too. But for this school, I think the main reason is the high acceptance rate yet fairly rigorous classes that cause a lot of initial dropouts.</p>