Purdue freshman retention rate

gstein
Tue, 18 May 2010 13:28:14 +0000

It depends. Some public universities have professors that care more, and so they are more willing to help students. Some public universities just recruit a more devoted freshman class, and so their students are harder working (not necessarily smarter). It varies, and it’s hard to put a sole reason why some schools are better at others when retaining their engineering students.

In my experience, I’ve seen that extra-curricular involvement stimulates interest and devotion. Some of the public universities try hard to get students involved in outside research teams, engineering organizations/clubs, etc. This is key in retaining students, and the statistics I’ve seen at my school show that. If you can show the engineering student that something they learned in the classroom which seems abstract or not relevant is actually applicable towards real-world engineering projects, then you can stimulate their mind to learn further in the respective subject. I’ve experienced this myself, first-hand.