The "6 year" graduation rate

ucbalumnus
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 14:29:38 +0000

Wje9164be:

It is not uncommon for a very top private university to have greater than 90 percent of students graduate in four years. For large state flagships the four year rate might be 60 percent or even lower.

That is no surprise, since the “very top private universities” are more selective than “large state flagships”. If you start with a cohort of stronger students, you are likely to get higher graduation rates. An additional factor is that “very top private universities” tend to have students from wealthier families (usually about half from the “no financial aid” top 3%), and tend to have good financial aid for those from families who are merely upper-middle income and below, so running out of money or needing to take reduced course loads to work lots of hours tends to be less of a concern.

Whether any of this affects the chances of a given individual student graduating on-time or not is another matter. A strong student without money concerns at a “large state flagship” is unlikely to have a significantly different chance of graduating on-time or late than if s/he went to a “very top private university”.

Expected graduation rates of colleges given student characteristics are discussed at:
http://heri.ucla.edu/DARCU/CompletingCollege2011.pdf

There is a basic graduation rate calculator at the page linked below, with a more detailed one linked at the bottom of the page:
http://www.heri.ucla.edu/GradRateCalculator.php

Students and parents wanting to estimate a given student’s chance of on-time or late graduation may want to put in a hypothetical university composed of 100% of students just like the given student and see what comes up.