moshot, you miss my point. It is not about universities not delivering. It is about students voluntarily doing activities up and above what is required for a degree such as going abroad for a quarter or two. Many students at Stanford have considered their financial situation and have voluntarily chose to do things that extend their time in college. That is their decision.
You seem to continue to have the opinion everyone must graduate in four years or there is something the university is doing wrong. All of the students I know while at Stanford who took one or two quarters beyond four years did so of their own choosing. Please try to make some distinction between universities “not delivering” and students making their own decisions about what they want to do.
I think what Waiting2exhale and NosyCaliparent were saying is they actually have kids at Stanford and they completely disagree with CA94309.
Initially I thought @CA94309 and I were of the same opinion, and CA’s point #3 was a “wink” of approval toward Stanford’s full-on advising offerings (great advising/can’t fail because of a dearth in that area), placed in the list almost to turn it on its head.
Moshot allowed that while mine was a possible interpretation, it was probably not the intended one. Turns out I processed the statement in its inverse.
(While my kid was accepted to Stanford, I never was! )
@googledrone, I doubt study abroad program having that much impact on the graduation rate for a couple of reasons 1) Students get credit during study abroad program even though mostly for GER 2) many elite colleges (at least Yale and Princeton) have study abroad programs. So, I can’t see how only Stanford is impacted. Moreover, with quarter system at Stanford the impact should be even less (one third vs half).
But I agree, 8 semester or 12 quarter graduation rate (excluding quarters absent) would be a better measure, but 4y graduation rate is what is reported and it should give an idea.
4y graduation is just the symptom and we can only speculate the causes. Only cause I can think of is "athlete pool’ distorting the rate. It is also interesting that UCB’s rate is very close to Stanford’s, even though UCB is much larger than Stanford.
II am just stating what I observe because I am as much puzzled as anyone else. Personally I don’t give that much importance to US News rankings, but I am interested in understanding the underlying data
@waiting2exhale, Thanks for sharing the info on the extent of advising available at Stanford.
now that I think of it… Katie Ledecky also red shirted and delayed enrollment by a year to train for Rio so she is going to show up as graduating in 5 years and not 4. and she will probably take another year off to train for the Tokyo Olympics basically taking 6 years to graduate.
comparing grad rates with a school like Stanford competing at an elite level in DIV 1 FBS athletics is a different ball game.
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