<p>Retention rate is 70%. What up?</p>
<p>And why do SO MANY black and asian students leave?</p>
<p>If ou mean freshman retention rate, 4 major factos pay role here:</p>
<ol>
<li>Academics</li>
</ol>
<p>reading 20 books first semester. I practically spend 6 hours a day trying finish the Hum readings and even then don't quite manage to finish it all. There are like 4 papers each semester which require 1 week of SERIOUS research, although some of the students start it one day before its due. Same for other subjects. I took calculus and our professor sort of assumed that all of us had already done it and started on advanced stuff pretty fast. Such assumptions play role everywhere. And there is this junior qual and thesis hell. , the graduation rate is also affected by other factors like some of the seniors missed their deadline for submision of thesis, or PE requirement was not completed and other such logistic stuff rather than the academics itself.</p>
<ol>
<li>Social Ethic</li>
</ol>
<p>Want socially fluid atmosphere? Reed is not for you. everyone more-or less settles down into their clique after some time and then its kind of frozen. Most of people don' socialize with ones outside their circle. The socially sensitive ones who fail to find their cliques find its good choice to drop out/ transfer. Its sink or swim thing, just like high school. Most of the colleges have much more fluid and welcoming social scene.</p>
<ol>
<li>Kids</li>
</ol>
<p>This is hard concept to quantify. I have met some amazingly intellegent and quirky kids out here. Others are downright arrogant and anti social. Some say that 50% of kids have serious relationship and 50% are socially retarded but I don't think thats true.However, I am informed that dating doesn't happen here much often. But kind of almost stranger kid in your class will be totally willing to go with you if yo ask them out. Wierd kind of thing. Some like it, some don't. There is some kind of paradox here with social ethic thing. You won't get it until you get it.</p>
<p>4 Reed</p>
<p>This is the most important factor. I think you'll have to be 'inherently reedie' to like reed. Not mnding sleep deprivation. Pulling all nighter every thursday.Hypocritically pretending to be clever than others (mostly during Hum Confernces). But don't get me wrong. Maybe you have heard such things before. There is a concept of "Olde Reed' which embodies such steriotype. But during past few years there seems to be some change in typical reedie characters. Everyone now feels that "Olde Reed is dead". Reed is in kind of transition now. This is evident in numerical data. Until few years back graduation rate was 35%, acceptance rate 75%. Now graduation rae has increased to 49% and acceptance rate down to 45%.</p>
<p>About asian students I must say that there is not much of racial mixing over here. International students have their own turf. Americans have their own turf. It is not uncommon to see a whole table occupied entirely by black students.</p>
<p>"Old Reed Is Dead" is an old refrain. I heard it when I was a student several decades ago. Each graduating class would proclaim "The Old Reed Is Dead," with the idea that once "we" had passed could things ever be as great as they were before?</p>
<p>I agree that things appear to be shifting somewhat at Reed, with a more diverse student body than in the old days. But at its core Reed appears to be very much the same, namely a demanding faculty and a demanding curriculum in which students are expected to commit their time and efforts above all to their academic activities. The curriculm is broader now, there is more emphasis on the arts than before and more attention to non-Western humanities, but still Reed excels in the sciences, math, languages, the classics, really almost every area that it focuses on. So you can get a superb education there if you commit to doing it. </p>
<p>But it has always been true that a certain percentage of admitted students are caught by surprise by the demandingness of the curriculum, and so they transfer out over time. If you look at the Common Data Set, it's clear that roughly half of those who do not graduate leave after the first year; this is, I believe, evidence of the "surprise" factor. But this attrition is declining for a number of reasons. One that wasn't mentioned above is that Reed is providing more financial aid than it did before. I'm not aware of any statistics on differences in graduation rates by different ethnic and race groups.</p>