To the OP. A couple % points will not make a difference. In fact you could dig down deeper into the numbers and discover that the only difference was that three more students left one school than the other. Many times it has nothing to do with the school and everything to do with the particular student. I know of kids who left schools because the dorm situation was so horrible they could not take it (ZooMass). That is not the schools fault. Some kids just prefer a different environment. And this is just one example. There are many many more reasons why one might leave after freshman year.
My kid’s school requires an adviser meeting around registration time and that the adviser sign off on her schedule - she cna’t register without that approval. Is that not typical?
If it isn’t, that might be one way for colleges to keep their retention and grad rates higher.
For us, both freshman retention and graduation rates for 4, 5 and 6 years were considered, but only generally. If they were TRULY crappy, the school wasn’t considered. I realize that there are many reasons why stats might be low so, unless a school can point to specifically why they are low (good luck with that), taking these stats with a grain of salt is probably best.
“So the UC grad rates, or Wm+Mary and UVa doing better with grad rates than UMich or UCs should simply suggest that you might want to dig deeper into reasons before your kid commits.”
“Looking at the USNews 4 year rates (if accurate) UVa is the top public, at 87%, Wm&Mary and UNC are the next I notice at 82%, Elon 79% (I’m skimming so I’m sure I missed a few.”
W&M and UNC do not have engineering schools. Less than 15% of UVA students are enrolled in engineering. I can’t speak for the UC schools, but Michigan has over 23% of its undergraduates enrolled in the College of Engineering. Engineering often requires more credit hours to complete than other majors. In the case of Michigan, it has nothing to do with classes not being available or a lack of resources. It is very common for those students to take more than four years to graduate, even with a full load each semester.
'UCLA or UMich, for instance, has a 6 year grad rate of about 90%, while there are 10 private colleges that claim a 4 year grad rate of over 90%. Certainly one knock on the UCs is availability of popular/required classes, which might be suggested in that stat, as the quality of the UCLA/UMich student should be relatively on par with Georgetown/BC/ND - all of whom have claim 89% or higher 4 year rate."
Georgetown and BC also do not offer engineering. ND also has less than 15% of its undergraduates enrolled in engineering.
@rjkofnovi all good things to dig into and again, it is just a red flag to look closer. For some kids (like my D) be able to get their Eng degree in 4 years was important and influenced her school search a little bit.
Some schools, like Hopkins, which is over 30% engineering undergrad, have pretty good 4 year stats compared to similar schools with smaller engineering classes.
This was not to call out specific schools, but to point out that the difference might be worth investigating. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence, for example, that if you aren’t regents at UCB you can have trouble getting popular courses. I don’t know if that’s true. But if my kid were going to commit to a school and program and I was paying part of the bill, I’d like to know if there were structural issues for them graduating in 4 years and what those might be.
I think it’s a pretty sound concept.
^^^Like I said, I can’t speak for the UC schools. Michigan is in better shape financially than that system. My point was its not really fair to compare graduation rates at schools who have small or non existent engineering programs to ones that do.
Graduation and retention rates comprise 30% of US News ranking criteria. That is clearly an overweighting and this is yet another fatal flaw in their methodology. The continued use of these stats (which have little to do with academic quality) will virtually guarantee that Stanford will never reach the top of the rankings where it by most legitimate measures deserves to be. I believe it is now ranked 5th, tied with Columbia. Columbia is a fine school (I’m an alum) but its profile in just about every area would put it a tier below that of Stanford.
Every school–even HYPSM–will lose 2-3% of those who enter. Add to that Stanford’s world class elite athletes AND entrepreneurial tech wizards and Stanford’s graduation and retention rates WILL always lag those of HYP. Stanford’s student body is arguably the most talented in the world. Its Olympians, other professional caliber athletes, techies, and entrepreneurs, in the aggregate, simply have more options than the students at any other college in America and probably in the world. Until the compilers at USNews wake up and learn what every academic “in the know” has known for years now–that Harvard and Stanford define the apex of America education, grad and undergrad–many, like myself, will continue to shake their heads and ask in a now annual ritual, " What planet is USNews on?"
@rjkofnovi perhaps, but it is possible to compare like school to like and looking at the places where the 4 year grad rate was lower than you might expect, esp. in relation to the 6 year grad rate, did clue my D into some quirks at different schools: like whether you could easily change a major sophomore or even Jr. year and whether you had to take many make-up classes if you did etc.
So, again, if I were advising folks looking at the number I’d be more interested in the difference between the 4 year and 6 year rate than anything. There may be a simple explanation for why a school has more kids take longer to graduate, but given that an extra year might cost you a few bucks I’d say it’s worth looking into.
let’s do the math…
300 athletic scholarships = 17% of incoming class. btw the Stanford athletic websites says it awards 500 athletic scholarships per year… so these are conservative numbers I"m using.
let’s say 20% redshirt , medical redshirt, train for olympics, join national team, enter draft, turn pro… (Stanford has been the top athletic program in the US for the past 22 years… its athletes are more likely to take time off to pursue these outside activities/ career opportunities than non- FBS schools)
3.4% change in 4 year grad rate… a material difference.
like I said apples to apples not oranges to apples.
“The continued use of these stats (which have little to do with academic quality) will virtually guarantee that Stanford will never reach the top of the rankings where it by most legitimate measures deserves to be.”
And the reason why anyone should care about this is what exactly?
Do any of the awesome Olympians and entrepreneurs coming out of Stanford care about this?
Any reasonable assessment of the rankings formula suggests that USNWR is essentially measuring HYPS-ness in its methodology. Since based on its methodology, HYPS always come out on top. Putting aside, of course, the travesty of Stanford coming in as tied for #5.
We all know anyway that the only correct ranking formula is H and S tied for #1, then there’s everyone else.
: )
If the only variable in the ratings were academic quality, you’d see a completely different set of schools in the 10-30 bucket, and a significant reordering of the top 10. So we can all drop the pretense that the “rankings” measure academic quality.
And why does anyone on the planet care whether Stanford is 8 or 6 or 12 or 3? What material difference does it make to a student’s intellectual development?
@sbballer - if there are 500 athletic scholarships, I wouldn’t expect 300 of them to be awarded to first-year students. Scholarships are awarded each year to students from all class years. And training for the Olympics doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not continuing with school and graduating on time; heck, my boss is training for the Olympics while holding down a full-time executive job in a fortune 100 company.
@sbballer I could be wrong but I am pretty sure that is 500 athletic scholarships total, meaning about 130 of them would be freshman. Thats about 7.3% of the incoming freshman class. So lets say that for each class 20% of that 7.3% do leave for athletic reasons. Thats a 1.5% hurt that Stanford takes in graduation rate compared to everyone else. And this is also assuming that athletes from other schools don’t also leave for similar reasons, maybe at a lower rate but they still do.
Anyways why are we discussing a 1.5% difference in Stanford’s graduation rate - even if you were right and its 3.4% why is this an issue? Stanford is ranked 5th. It should be in front of University of Chicago I’d agree with, you’d probably put it in front of a couple more schools, but is it really that big of an issue. The USNews Rankings does have its flaws and people know that. Most people would put Harvard one instead of Princeton. People know that it is not a perfect system and your complaining about being ranked 5th.
500 athletic scholarships are awarded each year according to the Stanford website. I think this is because sometimes Stanford awards partial athletic scholarships… so it awards 300 full time and 500 get some form of scholarship… that’s why the numbers are conservative…
like I said apples to apples not oranges to apples… run the numbers any way you want… the elite athletic program at Stanford is going to lower 4 year grad rates materially.
there are rankings and then there is yield
Stanford University 80.4%
Harvard University 79.8%
Brigham Young University 79.8%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 72.8%
University of Alaska—Fairbanks 70.2%
Princeton University 67.7%
Yale University 67.2%
University of Pennsylvania 64.3%
UA/Fairbanks is awesome!!
Talk about getting TOTALLY HOSED by the USNWR formula. A complete travesty.
@sbballer I guess we can just forget about how location will factor into Stanford’s yield being much higher whereas many different universities in the northeast (the ivy league??) are all fighting over cross admitted students.
500 scholarships awarded total to freshman, sophomore, juniors, and seniors. I could be wrong but I’m fairly certain that Stanford doesn’t have 2,000 scholarship athletes on campus. There is only so many sports.
Other than that don’t see what new was brought up there. BYU has a high yield because mostly Mormons apply and most Mormons who apply have it as their first choice (98.5% Mormon). We should also just forget that and rank BYU the 3rd best school in the country I guess. Why not rank University of Alaska 5th (for similar reasons to Stanford’s high yield compared to many ivy’s)
rationalize it anyway you want. different data points… different opinions:)
@sbballer We are using the same data points, I’m just talking about factors that will skew those data points. You seem to just want to talk about the factors that skew the data points against you and ignore the ones that help Stanford.
I’m also wondering why this matters so much.
which is the point I brought up. everyone can make up their own minds… about selectivity, “happiness” and other arbitrary measures. look behind the numbers… comparing 4 year grad rates with an FBS and non FBS school is an example of flawed methodology.