<p>Thanks in advance to wise CCers; I hope I'm not missing something terribly obvious.</p>
<p>Retention rate would seem to be the rate at which freshmen return for sophomore year, whether those who leave did so to transfer to another college, drop out, or take time off?</p>
<p>Transfer-out rate is the rate at which students leave, strictly to go to another school and at any point in their college career?</p>
<p>And therefore the numbers don't correlate at all?</p>
<p>I’m sure you’ve done a bit of inquiry on this subject. I’d argue that your difficulty in pinning down the definitions means that colleges apply their own definitions.</p>
<p>There are so many ways a student’s status could change that “retention rate” may be hard to pin down. Are we talking about full time students? If so, a student (like my D) who reduced her load due to a medical situation would not be “retained.” Students may drop out for financial reasons, or take leaves of absence for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>Good point, NewHope; thanks for sharing. It’s interesting that “retention” is one place on the Common Data Set form where no definition is provided.</p>
<p>^ If Hanna and I were having a casual conversation, I’d agree that Hanna’s/OP’s definitions are correct. But I think the OP wanted to know whether her definition was appropriate for interpreting data supplied by various colleges.</p>
<p>Salient Question: True/False: All colleges define “retention” and “transfer rate” as the OP does.</p>
<p>Bonus Question: True/False: The common data set provides a definition for “percent of transfer students accepted” because it’s such a complex concept, but doesn’t provide a definition for “retention” because EVERYBODY knows what that is.</p>
<p>[Full Disclosure: I interpret institutional data for a living, a job that requires a healthy skepticism of self-reported data.]</p>