"Worst" Colleges

<p>I guess this is the annual revival of this FOUR year old thread…</p>

<p>I don’t think high acceptance rates or low SAT scores for acceptance are good measures of quality. Lawrence University has around an 80% acceptance rate but is widely recognized as being a great liberal arts college (it’s just in a small Midwestern town and few people have heard of it, therefore its student body tends to be self-selecting). Also, some schools have low SAT scores because their student bodies are largely low-income or minority, but that doesn’t mean the quality of the education itself is bad.</p>

<p>Instead, you should look at outcomes. Here, for example, is a list of public universities with the worst graduation rates: <a href=“11 Public Universities with the Worst Graduation Rate | The Fiscal Times”>http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2012/05/17/11-Public-Universities-With-The-Worst-Graduation-Rates&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Notice that some of these are actually pretty selective (Texas Southern has an acceptance rate of 36%, which is about on par with schools like Smith and Mount Holyoke, but they only have a 13% graduation rate).</p>

<p>I think a school that has been universally panned is Chicago State University, with a 14% graduate rate and a 58% freshman retention rate. The administration was legitimately afraid that their accreditation was not going to be renewed, but it was. </p>

<p>Which brings another measure, perhaps - accreditation. For example, Morris Brown College (a small historically black LAC in Atlanta) lost their accreditation in the mid-2000s, and none of their credits transfer elsewhere. Quality had been flagging before that, though, and the school doesn’t have enough resources to give a proper education to their students.</p>

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<p>Acceptance rates are not reliable indicators of selectivity, due to differences in applicant pool strength. For example, <a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate/page+3”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate/page+3&lt;/a&gt; lists Barnard, Liberty, Vassar, and Haverford with similar acceptance rates.</p>

<p>In any case <a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1139”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1139&lt;/a&gt; says that Texas Southern recently had a 53% acceptance rate, and its frosh had an average of 2.96 HS GPA, 424/404/398 SAT, and 17 ACT, and only 58% came from the top half of their high school classes.</p>

<p>“2.96 HS GPA, 424/404/398 SAT, and 17 ACT, and only 58% came from the top half of their high school classes.”</p>

<p>Why do schools take such a low quality of students? And with a 13% graduation rate, shouldn’t they know better than to take such a bad crop of students?</p>

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<p>It’s a historically black university with strong roots in the African American community. Applicants are generally poor, first generation college students coming from under-performing primary and secondary schools.</p>

<p>@Data10 - That could’ve just been a really motivated, bright cat. </p>

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<p>There are lots of colleges that admit students to give them a chance that they might not otherwise have. Open admission community colleges are common, obvious examples, but there are many four year schools (particularly lesser known public schools) with such policies. From a public policy standpoint (for the public schools), the tradeoff is how much cost to bear from students who attend unsuccessfully in order to get some students another chance to become more productive citizens through college education.</p>

<p>Ohio State Penitentiary </p>

Johnston Atoll University

Please use old threads only for research.