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defyingravity1
Member
| Joined: | Mon Jan 7th, 2008 |
| Location: | NYC |
| Posts: | 75 |
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Posted: Sat Jan 12th, 2008 03:15 am |
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When looking at schools, what are acceptable retention rates from freshman to sophmore year? Should they be above a certian number, and if they are not, should one look inquire as to the reasons when they tour?
Also how reliable is college board on things like acceptane rate, retention rate, % of in-state to out of state? For example in the Fiske Guide, they say that 15% of Beloit students are in state, on College Board it says 20, Earlham they said 20%, College Board says 32% in-state etc.
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CarolynLawrence
Administrator
| Joined: | Sun Mar 5th, 2006 |
| Location: | USA |
| Posts: | 3396 |
| Mana: |   |
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Posted: Mon Jan 14th, 2008 01:55 am |
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The average 6-year graduation rate for all 4-year colleges is 56%. But, that doesn't tell you anything about whether a particular student at a particular college is likely to graduate in 4, 5 or even 6 years.
We know, for instance, that nationally, public institutions tend to have lower grad rates than private, but yet there are some public institutions, such as the U of Virginia, that have grad rates pretty close to top private colleges. African American and Hispanic students have lower grad rates (39% and 44% respectively) than whites and Asians. Women tend to graduate at a higher rate than men. Average grad rates tend to be somewhat correlated with the percentage of students on financial aid, as well (the larger the percentage, the lower the grad rate on average). And, grad rates in some majors are lower than others as well. Additionally, some correlation has been found between the median SAT scores of colleges and their grad rates.
Yet, there are exceptions to every rule, and, again, statistics for the whole don't tell us much about whether YOU or any other student will graduate from a certain college. Some schools do a very good job with supporting students with lower level test scores (see: http://collegehunt.blogspot.com/2005/05/4-year-graduation-rates-part-ii.html), others have higher grad rates among Hispanics and African Americans.
I think when you are looking at and comparing grad rates, therefore, you need to ask several questions of the individual schools themselves:
1. What percentage of students are on financial aid?
2. What are the median test scores?
3. How does the curriculum compare - is one school more demanding than another, or are they comparable?
4. What support services are available to help students graduate?
5. Is the school's grad rate going up or down or staying relatively stable? Why?
6. How does the grad rate vary among majors? What's the grad rate for students in MY major?
7. What are the most common reasons students leave the college? (Keep in mind that students leave colleges for all sorts of reasons that are NOT related to the college itself -- i.e., personal problems, family problems, illness, running out of money, deciding they don't want to go to college, etc.)
8. What are MY chances of graduating in four years from this college in my intended major?
In terms of the data on in-state students, this number varies from year to year with each incoming class, especially at very small schools like Beloit where just a few extra students in a class of 250-350 can make a difference. .Additionally, some publishers use data from different years as well (book publishers typically update their data less frequently than websites). If you are curious about the current percentage of in-state students at any other school, email admissions. They'll likely have the most current and reliable numbers.
Last edited on Mon Jan 14th, 2008 01:57 am by CarolynLawrence
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mmaah
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| Joined: | Mon Mar 27th, 2006 |
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| Posts: | 70 |
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Posted: Fri Jan 18th, 2008 02:10 am |
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I've been interested for awhile in how hard it is to make sense of "graduation rate" as a useful statistic and think it is not a very reliable indicator of worth at all until you look into details of a specific school. I've never understood how "combined programs" effect these stats: For example, if a small liberal arts school has combined programs: like engineering, law, etc--and a number of students go on to a combined program at CalTech, Columbia, Duke, etc and don't graduate for 5 or 6 years because they are doing a combined degree--then my guess is that these students lower the 4-year rate...but this is not a negative measure of the quality of the school.....and in small schools a few students makes a big percentage difference. So this is not, for me, a useful statistic.
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