Purdue freshman retention rate

BanjoHitter
Tue, 18 May 2010 11:24:59 +0000

The latest data I’ve seen has the average at just over 60% nation-wide. Thus, Purdue’s 50% is low, and it’s reasonable to ask “Why?”

Overall, Purdue has about a 70% retention rate for the university, which is about average. So that suggests that people aren’t unhappy with Purdue. The question is why so many people drop out of engineering to other majors. The reason could be anything from “Purdue does an excellent job informing freshman about engineering, thus causing many students to transfer before they get ‘in too deep’ to transfer out” to “Purdue’s engineering program is poorly designed and difficult”. If I was considering Purdue, I’d want to know.