re #38, the term “a lot” of self attrition depends on standards for what “a lot” means. Graduation rates within Cornell’s engineering college itself (excluding transfers to other of the university’s colleges) have always been 80-90% at least, whenever I’ve seen these numbers. It may have seemed higher to someone based on their personal acquaintances with a small subset of the whole.
I am actually part of that number, but I didn’t bow out due to bombing the intro classes. I switched out to be a physics major in the arts & sciences college. I knew only one other guy who switched when I did, though I’m sure there were some others. But no avalanche. The people I knew who did bomb those courses : one took time off came back and finished in the engineering college, another flunked out altogether. They couldn’t transfer to another college within the university- particularly not arts & sciences- because those colleges had standards too and were not there to take engineering’s dregs.
There was some shifting of intended majors within the engineering college before junior year, , eg from intended chemical engineering to industrial engineering for someone who bombed organic chemistry; intended EE finds out he likes ME more, once he’s been exposed to it; etc That was a lot more common than switching out of engineering altogether.
Switching out definitely happened too, it’s just I would call it “some”, not " a lot". Lots, probably most, of non-engineering colleges have graduation rates lower than the graduation rate of Cornell’s engineering college.