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<p>That seems to be generally true for LACs; a little less true for universities. Even among LACs there’s not a perfect correlation. Schools like Holy Cross and Bucknell “punch above their weight,” with retention rates a bit higher than you’d predict just from SAT scores and GPAs. Meanwhile Harvey Mudd, with the strongest SATs and GPAs among the LACs, comes in tied for 18th in retention rate–although at 94.8% it’s not too shabby. Grinnell also underperforms a bit, though at 93.0% it’s not doing too badly.</p>
<p>There’s a chicken-and-egg question here, though. You’d naturally expect the students with the strongest stats to adjust most quickly, on average, to the rigors of college academics. But it could also be in part because the top LACs provide the most attractive and supportive combination of academic and social life that they attract the top students. It’s hard to say how happy those same students would be at a school further down the pecking order. We just don’t know whether students are leaving the not-quite-as-highly-ranked LACs in larger numbers for academic reasons, or because of social or cultural reasons, lack of academic or personal support, frustration growing out of lack of institutions resources, or whatever. </p>
<p>Among universities, what’s most striking to me is that the top 5 publics (UC Berkeley, UVA, UCLA, Michigan, and UNC Chapel Hill) do extremely well in freshman retention, about as well as the top private universities and the top LACs—despite much larger classes (and therefore far more students to keep happy), less financial resources per student, larger classes, higher S/F ratios, and generally weaker stats at the bottom of their freshman classes. They must be doing something right! There’s a pretty steep dropoff among public universities, however, which suggests broad-brushed generalizations about what life is like at public universities in general should be taken with a huge grain of salt.</p>