<p>I’m hoping to transfer to AU from a flagship university in Florida. I’m taking 13 credits this semester and I am 95% sure that I will have a 4.0. Next semester I am scheduled to take 16 credits. I’ve joined Phi Alpha Delta, the pre-law fraternity and am interning at a public policy organization.</p>
<p>High School:
ACT:28
GPA: 3.7 Unweighted
4.1 Weighted
6 APs (Calculus BC, Literature, Language, European History, US History, Chemistry)
National Honor Society
Student Council
President/Founder of Jewish Culture Club
Nursing Home Volunteer (over 300 hours over high school period)
Part-time job (about 12 hrs/week)</p>
<p>I visited the school a couple weeks ago and spoke with someone in transfer admissions. I really do like the school and think that it would be a good fit for myself. But, please chance me and tell me what you think.</p>
<p>transferhelp~ i don't know if this statistic is correct or not, but as we all know, statistics "lie". i'd guess an exceptionally high international student population, as compared to other colleges accounts for some of this. some kids can't cut the difficulty having to translate ALL the work, and leave to go back to their own homes. as far as pulses go...the pulse pressure at AU is stronger than average! ;)</p>
<p>If you look under acceptance and retention, AU has an 87% retention rate from freshman to sophmore year...which means 13% of the class leaves. </p>
<p>Honestly, I'm not sure why that is...in my opinion its because people generally have a very strong feeling about the school once they've lived here for a semester. People seem to love it or hate it, and unfortunately, there's a very strong minority that is unhappy and decides to leave. I'm at AU now, and I really don't feel its the place for me - so I will be trying to tranfer into another school for next fall. I'm not saying AU is a bad school - it just isn't the place for me for the next four years. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a private message. :)</p>
<p>According to AU's President, last year, AU's retention rate (freshmen to sophomores) was 89.1%. AU's first semester retention rate this year (fall to spring) is slightly higher than last year, which indicates that they are on track to match or improve the rate going forward. In addition, for the 40th consecutive year AU participated in the annual survey of college freshmen, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute. More than 57% of our fall 2005 freshmen said that AU was their first choice school. These are encouraging trends that suggest the increased satisfaction with an AU education among our most important constituents our students.
Based on my personal experience, those who transfer out are generally the foreign students who have difficulty keeping up with the language barrier. Other than that, most are very satisfied with the academics, interships, diversity and location!</p>
<p>hi again, transferhelp! hope you're feeling helped!;) so i did a little more checking, as i think a first year retention of close to 90% is pretty darned good. hard to get to these stats, but this is some stuff i found: i purposely looked at higher tier, same tier and lower tier schools.....
all for first year retention, which was the other poster's negative take. there are many other interesting stats out there, ie, what %age of kids get their degree in 4 years..AU is very high on that, and is somewhere listed here on CC! so, ok, back to my finds, however brief:
UVA...96.8%
GW...92%
Villanova...94%
Elon ...about 86% or lower
Loyola,Baltimore...86% or lower.
was looking, just for DC comparison on Georetown, but couldn't find. as is usually the case, AU and GW remain neck-and-neck.<br>
take care!</p>
<p>I think the comment AU takes anyone with a pulse is so far from the truth. This school is equally as competitive as GW and many other high ranking schools. You cannot just waltz into AU --- Keeping that in mind, this school is not for everyone. In my opinion, as has been previously written in this thread, there is a percentage of students who have a language barrier and go back to their homelands and others probably don't research the schools they apply to well enough. it is clearly written in many ranking books that AU is not for everyone, it is for very passionate career-focused students for the most part who also love an international feel which is AU. This is a perfect mix for IR and IR related majors because it is so international and global that is not a good fit for all students especially those looking for a rah rah school. My thinking is that the remainder of students who transfer out were just not a good fit. Some of my friends transferred out because they couldn't cut it academically (AU is known for academic rigor), and I have known foreign students whose parents wouldn't pay another year's tuition because their grades weren't strong enough because they had to translate everything.</p>
<p>hi transfer, if you still care! ;) i did some fairly extensive research on retention rates, and again tried to go "all over the place" in terms of private,public, different types of school. here are some, not counting the ones above which i listed earlier:
Hampshire College 79
UMass, amherst 83
Hamilton 93
SUNY,binghamton 89
Syracuse U 90
NYU 92
Lafayette Coll 92
UVM 84
George Mason 86
u of Mary Washington 84
Emerson Coll 88
Boston U 91
Catholic U of amer 81
U Delaware 90
Elon 89</p>
<pre><code>so, as you can see, these are all good schools, with a variety of flavors. many are matches for AU some above, some below purposely done for fairness. in sum, AU stands strong on overall retention rates @ 89-90. i did not go into academic quality for any of these schools, however, or any other aspects of them which contribute to a particular school's desirability for a particular kind of student.
</code></pre>