<p>According to the College Board website, UChicago is now claiming a 99% freshman retention rate, putting it up with Yale and Columbia at the very top in the country. Stanford is 98% and Harvard is 97% (the percentage of freshman who return for sophomore year.)</p>
<p>Last year:
Freshman</a> Retention Rate | Rankings | Top National Universities | US News</p>
<p>Up from 95% in 2004:
[First-Year</a> Retention Rate Analysis - CollegeMeasures.org - University of Chicago](<a href=“Education Data Initiative: College Costs & Student Loan Research”>Education Data Initiative: College Costs & Student Loan Research)</p>
<p>What are the possible causes of this?</p>
<p>More satisfied students, obviously. It’s a testament to Chicago’s improvement of student life and an increase in prestige that means fewer students looking to transfer.</p>
<p>In what ways has UChicago increased its student satisfaction rates?</p>
<p>and omg ur still here :D</p>
<p>I’m guessing the extensiveness of the Core helps to turn some people away from the idea of transferring. After you’ve invested that much time into something that isn’t present at most other schools, you want to stick with it. It probably only makes a minor difference in the numbers–I just think it’s a possibility.</p>
<p>Well, you might say that yield rate tells you what people think of a school before they get there and freshman retention rate tells you what they think after. (These days people are more likely to drop out of Harvard and Stanford than UChicago. I think something like 15 years ago UChicago had a retention rate of 88% vs. 99% today.) Let’s hope it has something to do with happier students and their recognition of the great education they are receiving. (I suspect that behind the scenes the administration these days is much more concerned with keeping students happy than in the past. The University has come to realize that:
<p>Truth123 - 15 years ago, UChicago’s retention rate (maybe not freshman retention rate but overall retention rate) was about 80%. This certainly held true for me, and it was a bit sad - of my ~10 closest friends at UChicago, 2 transferred, and, on top of that, 2 attempted unsuccessfully to transfer to Columbia. </p>
<p>The problem with a low retention rate is it doesn’t capture the ~10-15% more students who either THINK actively about transferring or actively attempt to transfer. So, I’d say of my cohorts back in the 90s, ~20% left, and probably another 10-15% attempted to leave. That’s a lot.</p>
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<p>Chicago has been working on improving the quality of undergraduate life for the past 20-30 years. It has built better dorms, improved food service, provided more funding for sports and arts activities, strengthened its “house” system, reformed the Core Curriculum to offer a greater range of choices within the Core, created more study-abroad opportunities, including choices that work for science, math, and econ majors, tried to admit more students who would work to support student organizations from fraternities to newspapers and the radio station, fostered fun traditions . . . .and also admitted fewer risky students who might be brilliant or might also go over the edge (or both). </p>
<p>I suspect the latest gain in retention is largely due to fewer students entering the university with a sense of deep disappointment that they weren’t accepted at a long list of higher choices. If students come in with a positive attitude, expecting to have fun, they likely will have fun, and they will less likely start filling out transfer applications when it’s all icy in February and they are procrastinating on their second-quarter midterms.</p>
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<p>hahaha - that is such a good point.</p>
<p>Does 99% pass the sniff test? Sounds like an administration that looks the other way when freshmen screw up …</p>
<p>@victor6 hahaha! you know, these days universities are praised for high retention and graduation rates, and to a certain extent I understand the upside of this. there can be a very brutal side to high dropout rates. but part of me is old school enough that you could say–shouldn’t people be failing out? there was a time when they did. (these days everybody graduates from Harvard with honors, which keeps Mommy and Daddy happy and makes everybody just feel swell about what a little genius they’ve raised.)however, until such time as people start to value low retention rates and low graduation rates, I am happy to see UChicago at the top of the scale for retention.</p>
<p>@cue7 Thanks! I didn’t know the exact figure but I knew it was quite a bit lower back in the day. But just another measure upon which UChicago has improved.</p>