Colleges & Universities with a 96% average retention rate:
USC
Georgetown
Univ. of Rochester
Villanova
Wellesley College
Bowdoin College
Carleton College
Middlebury College
Wash & Lee University
Vassar College
College of the Holy Cross
Colorado College
Colleges & Universities with an average 95% retention rate:
Boston College
UC-San Diego
College of William & Mary
Wisconsin
Texas
Georgia
Santa Clara
Maryland
Stevens Institute of Technology
Lehigh
Claremont McKenna College
Davidson College
Wesleyan University
Bates College
USMA–West Point
Barnard College
Colleges & Universities with an average 94% retention rate:
Emory University
Wake Forest University
Ohio State Univ.
Univ. of Washington
Gonzaga
North Carolina State
Colby College
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Colgate University
Macalester College
SOKA
USAFA at Colorado Springs
Lafayette College
Wheaton College (Illinois)
Colleges & Universities with an average retention rate of 93%:
NYU
UC-Santa Barbara
UC-Irvine
UC-Davis
Boston University
Brandeis
RPI
Case Western Reserve
Illinois
Tulane
Florida State
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Rutgers-NB
Virginia Tech
UConn
Colorado School of Mines
Clemson
Smith College
Univ. of Richmond
Bryn Mawr
Bucknell University
Pitzer
Whitman College
Union College
Hillsdale College
Colleges & Universities with an average 92% retention rate:
Purdue
Univ. of Miami
GWU
SUNY-Binghamton
Michigan State
Scripps
Thomas Aquinas
Franklin & Marshall
Skidmore College
St. Olaf
Illinois Wesleyan
Colleges & Universities with an average 91% retention rate:
Pepperdine University
Syracuse University
SMU
UMass-Amherst
Miami U. (Ohio)
Delaware
Fordham
Texas A&M
Indiana
TCU
Auburn
Mount Holyoke College
Dickinson College
Furman University
Occidental College
Centre
Gettysburg
Rhodes
Muhlenberg
Colleges & Universities with a 90% retention rate:
Loyola Marymount
Elon
UC-Santa Cruz
Temple
Saint Louis Univ.
UC-Riverside
SUNY-Stony Brook
Yeshiva
Utah
Chapman
Dayton
UCF
Oberlin College
Conn College
Trinity College
Spelman
St.Lawrence University
Kalamazoo
Grove City
Colleges & Universities with an average 89% retention rate:
BYU
Baylor
Marquette
Univ. of San Diego
Roch. Inst. of Tech.
Creighton
Howard
Tulsa
Samford
FIU
Denison University
Univ. of the South
Principia
Hope College
St. Anselm
Colleges & Universities with an average 88% retention rate:
Drexel
NJ Inst. of Tech
Univ. of South Carolina
Iowa State
Drake
U. St. Thomas
Mercer University
Wabash College
Lawrence University
Reed College
Augustana
VMI
Wofford College
Gustavus Adolphus College
Stonehill College
87% Retention Rate:
Arizona State University
Oregon
Missouri
Univ. of Cincinnati
Alabama
Quinnipiac
Clark University
SUNY-Buffalo
Univ. of Denver
Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
College of Wooster
Wheaton College-Mass.
St. John’s (Minnesota)
Houghton College
Although the average retention rate for colleges & universities is about 78%, concern should arise at a retention rate in the low 80s, in my opinion.
Univ. of San Francisco at 84%
Loyola-Chicago at 84%
Univ. of Kansas at 82%
SUNY-College of Env. Science & Forestry at 82%
Hofstra at 81%
Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa at 78%
Univ. of Maine at 76%
Bard College at 85%
Sarah Lawrence at 84%
Hendrix College at 84%
New College of Florida at just 80%
Goucher College at 79%
Guilford College at 69%
Also, Clarkson University, an engineering school in extreme upstate New York near Suny-Potsdam & near St. Lawrence University, has a retention rate of 89%.
Clarkson University has an enrollment of slightly over 3,000 students of whom 60% major in engineering.
Clarkson University offers an interesting major:
Purchasing, Procurement/ Acquisitions and Contract Management.
In other words, you would be concerned about any less selective college, since it has more weaker students who are more likely to leave due to academic difficulty.
What may be of more interest when selecting a college is how its retention and graduation rates compare with those expected for a college with the same students.
So the retention rate seems to match the ranking pretty well in the top echelon of schools.
I wonder what is the relationship between retention and financial burdens of students. The higher retention rate at more selective schools with larger endowment could be due to they tend to have more of wealthier kids and/or offer more generous financial packages to their students.
However, an individual applicant can use more direct measures of financial feasability (net price calculator when making application list; actual net price after FA and scholarships when comparing admission offers – note renewal criteria for merit scholarships as well) rather than make assumptions based on the college’s retention and graduation rates.
Obviously, there are ways where even more direct measures may have inaccuracy (e.g. colleges which have a reputation of reducing FA significantly for second year students whose family finances do not change significantly), but retention and graduation rates may not fully reflect that as a proxy measure (one college that popped up in this context in these forums has a first to second year retention rate of 95%).
Yes, a college with academically stronger students from richer families and enough money to give good FA to those not from richer families will have an advantage in retention rates.
However, worse FA at more selective colleges may “weed out” students before matriculation, which may be why even some relatively selective colleges notorious for poor FA (e.g. NYU, BU, Penn State) have first to second year retention rates that may not appear to be concerning at first glance. Financial dropouts may be more common at less selective colleges that enroll more local or commuter student populations for whom they were the “most affordable” college but not really affordable or only barely affordable.
At the most selective universities it’s academics or personal reasons that cause dropouts, not financial reasons, this tends to reverse as you go down the selectivity list. As an anecdote, in my DD house at UChicago they had one person academically suspended for a year (more of a maturity issue), he is now back at the school after completing the requirements for reinstatement. Not even sure if that is counted as a retention or not (at least for one year).
Academic and financial factors are probably the dominant ones in retention and graduation rates. It is no surprise that there is a strong correlation between being more selective academically and having higher retention and graduation rates. If you (as a college) can enroll academically stronger students, fewer of them will have academic difficulty and drop out for that reason. Similarly, if you can enroll students from richer families, fewer of them will drop out because they ran out of money.
But overall retention and graduation rates may not be applicable to an individual student based on his/her academic strength and how affordable the colleges are to him/her.
I don’t know what the variables are in US news’s regression analysis , but I’m guessing if one included variables for SAT and some measure pertaining to student wealth one might get pretty close.
Assuming this is from the CDS - “ For the cohort of all full-?time bachelor’s (or equivalent) degree-seeking undergraduate students who entered your ins?tituti?on as freshmen in Fall 20XX, what percentage was enrolled at your ins?titutiuon as of the date your ins?titution calculates its official enrollment in Fall 20XX+1”