<p>Why does the University of South Carolina have such a low 4 year grad rate?</p>
<p>Freshman who graduate within 4 years: 45%
Freshman who graduate within 5 years: 64%
Freshman who graduate within 6 years: 67%</p>
<p>I think the average 4 year grad rate is about 50-60%. Lower than it should be.</p>
<p>I don’t know specifically for USC, but possibilities could be that it’s hard to get into the classes you need and people have to take more than 4 years, people quit and come back later taking longer than 4 years, or enough people doing a double major and needing more than 4 years. Other reasons too…but that’s what I could think of that might explain it.</p>
<p>These graduation rates are actually quite good for a public university. Why do public universities often have low graduation rates? Three big reasons (there are others) are:</p>
<p>1) These universities are obligated to admit any in-state student with a GPA of X and/or a test score of Y. This means that many freshman arrive without clear goals for their educations, and with only a minimum set of academic skills. There is a lot of sink-or-swim that goes on during freshman year, and a fair number of students are back home before Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>2) These universities are less expensive for in-state residents, which means that students who have marginal financial situations will be able to start out there. Some of them will drop out entirely because of money issues. Others will take time off to work and save money before returning in a later semester. Still others will cut back to part-time student status so that they have more time for their jobs.</p>
<p>3) Just like with community colleges, a fair number of these students are already adults with lives, families, and jobs that they have to balance around their classes. This category of student almost never can manage to finish in only four years, but they do finish.</p>
<p>The good news is that students who arrive at a public university well prepared for their studies and who dedicate themselves to their classwork do indeed graduate on time, and go on to lead successful post-college lives. Don’t look at these graduation numbers and assume that you can’t get a decent education at U of SC. Pick up the phone, make an appointment with the admissions office and another one with your potential major department, and talk with them about your own goals and how you can achieve them.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>
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<p>Well, maybe in comparison to publics as a whole, but let’s keep some perspective here. Here are the 6-year graduation rates for the top publics:</p>
<p>UVA 93%
Wm & Mary 91%
UCB 90%
UCLA 89%
Michigan 89%
UNC Chapel Hill 87%</p>
<p>These are all 20-25 points higher than U South Carolina, and rival the 6-year graduation rates of many fancy privates (e.g., Caltech 89%, MIT 91%, U Chicago 91%, Johns Hopkins 91%, Cornell 92%, Vanderbilt 91%, Emory 90%, Carnegie Mellon 84%, Southern Cal 88%). Even Clemson, South Carolina’s other public flagship, has a 6-year grad rate of 77%, a healthy 10 points above South Carolina’s. So let’s not give them too many excuses. And let’s not lump all publics into the same low-performing category.</p>
<p>Clemson has very strict admissions requirements (something many state residents are not happy with). USC on the other hand admits students according to a certain GPA/SAT level. If you have a 3.0 GPA and a SAT of 1000, a news story recently came out that said that you could get admitted into South Carolina</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“Best College Values, 2019 | Kiplinger”>Best College Values, 2019 | Kiplinger]Kiplinger.com[/url</a>]
(click-sort on 4-yr. graduation rate column)</p>
<p>USC/Columbia is about in the middle of this pack.</p>