Why doe Emory have such Low Rates?

readbooks · June 19, 2012, 12:47am

I checked US news and both the graduation and retention rates for Emory University is significantly low compared to other top tier schools.

For instance, according to the USNEWS 2012 ranking, NotreDame has 98% retention rate, Berkeley has 97% retention rate, Georgetown has 97% retention rate, amd EMORY has 95% retention rate…Why??

Also, the graduation rate of 89% is the lowest among top 20 schools and lower than may of the top 35 schools. (i.e Georgetown has 93%, UVA 93%, NotreDame 96%, Rice 93%, Vanderbilt has 92%, cornell has 93%, etc)

Can anyone explain this strange phenomenon? I thought Emory was a top school which top notch students with amazing academic reputation, and these low retention and graduation rates compared to its peers do not make any sense to me.

aluminum_boat · June 19, 2012, 12:51am

95% versus 97% isn’t significantly low.
Neither is 89% versus 93%.

I imagine people transfer.

bernie12 · June 19, 2012, 2:08am

Yes, some people may transfer, but a 2% difference is not huge, and to be honest, these are replaced by those who transfer in (sure this happens at the other schools too). Also, comparing to Berkeley is a little unfair. They are much larger so they are less sensitive to those who transfer or drop out. The other retention rates are, however, provide fair points of comparison. Emory has always been lower than the others in this arena. I can’t explain the graduation rate. It’s expensive, and stuff happens. I guess some folks would drop out or perhaps some may get in trouble academically. Who knows (the graduation rate cannot be completely explained by transfers like retention)? Also, the opposite could be occurring where more students who can afford to do so, do a 5th year (seriously, not everyone knows or easily finds what they want to do and it may take extra time. I know plenty like this. Not everyone really has their life planned out or go on predictable paths), or even take a leave during their career at Emory (also, those who transfer in sometimes have trouble graduating on time). This hype of a perfect 4-year graduation rate is kind of unwarranted. Now-a-days it just tells you how easy a school is or how homogeneous the plights of certain students are at some schools.

readbooks · June 19, 2012, 3:14am

2-3% in retention rate and 3-5% graduation rate differences may not look and sound huge, but if you consider the fact that within other top 20 schools, the retention and graduation rates differ only by 1-2%, I think the data could possibly be telling us something significance.

Something that I have noticed:
All the top 15 schools in USNEWS have high graduation rate (above 90% which is still higher than that of Emory). But if you pick the lowest three schools out of top 15 schools, these schools include Caltech, MIT, UChicago and Johns Hopkins, all of which are considered pretty hard schools to get great GPAs.

Also, I have found this trend that among top 50 schools, schools with high quality engineering schools (Georgiatech, Carnegie Mellon and etc) have somewhat lower graduation rate compared to their peer institutions.

So, maybe the difficulty of achieving high GPA could be a possible reason? how hard is it to get a good GPA hard at Emory?

Also, I understand that low graduation rates are due to dropping out of students, students doing 5th year (either because they failed the course or because they simply want to take more classes). But I am curious to know WHY Emory has more of these kind of students. Does the school lack the academic quality? Is the grading too difficult that more students drop out? Does the school encourage 5th year schooling? etc.

Also, I am curious why more students from Emory transfer out compared to its peer institutions. What is it that makes Emory students more dissatisfied with Emory than other schools? Is it the social scene? is it the academic quality? is it the difficulty of the classes?

I am sorry for asking too many questions, but as a student who is really interested in Emory and wants to attend this college, these low graduation and retention rates do stand out and bother me.

Thank you for reading my comments and answering this thread. I do really appreciate all the comments.

aigiqinf · June 19, 2012, 9:49am

Emory has a large number of students who are obsessed with prestige–more so than peer schools. In part, I think this is because we lack a sense of identity and tradition, which is what draws students to other schools and keeps them there. Thus, students who are doing well and not receiving merit-based financial aid have no reason not to apply for admission to a school a few spots higher on the U.S. News List, if all they care about is prestige.

For students (particularly those from Georgia or who are pre-med), who aren’t doing anywhere as well as they’d hoped, continuing to pay for Emory may no longer make sense, so students transfer to a cheaper, instate school.

A third thing is that Emory doesn’t offer many applied majors compared to some of our peers and all of our courses are 4-hours, meaning students take fewer courses over the course of their undergraduate careers. As pre-professional as Emory is, I think this is an issue–why don’t we have anything like public policy or management and society? I’m planning on submitting a transfer application, not because of any specific qualms with Emory, but because I’m really looking for a public policy program.

bernie12 · June 19, 2012, 10:28am

Yeah, those are valid weaknesses. For example, one big issue is that Emory does not have engineering yet people who want engineering, but did not do their research on us, enroll. Needless to say, hopefully these people transfer.

aiginf: You should check into B-School offerings, or if you decide to transfer when leaving Oxford, tell the administration how you see a disconnect in its claiming it wants to stay connected to the liberal arts, but fosters a pre-professional environment through its recruitment and environment, while not offering more applied course offerings outside of the B-school.

Readbooks: Are you a statistic? Do you plan to come in with an attitude or different way of thinking that will cause you to transfer (such as “I am obsessed with prestige and rankings like some of the students that come here in the top 75% or am not able to handle the work as well as anticipated”) or graduate late (such as, I’ll try a lot of things and kind of wander, or take a year off to go abroad or do something I find interesting)? If not, don’t really worry about it. When I was here, the amount of people that dropped out or transferred was not that noticeable at because I was enjoying myself (despite my critiques of this school, I was indeed enjoying most aspects of it). Had they had been in like the 70s/low 80s, then of course I would notice everyone disappearing, but you simply don’t. And like I said, with transfers, each person transferring out is replaced with a less stuck up person that actually appreciates what the school offers and not just its prestige level. So, after some of these folks leave, Emory becomes a happier place (not to mention, it seems to me that transfers and Oxford students work harder and care a bit more about their academic work than those on campus. This is at least what I see in the sciences. Most of the regular didn’t just come to Emory to make As and get a nice piece of paper. Most of them recognize that this place offers a better, more challenging environment than their home institution and appreciate this. Those that transferred out sometimes cared less about these elements and more about “we don’t have football”. etc)

By the way, Caltech’s average graduating GPA is a 3.4, so is Chicago’s, so is Emory’s (just below it), perhaps MIT as well. Johns Hopkins may be about the same too because our institutional average between all 4 years (as in if you average 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year grades) is the same or a tad lower than Hopkins (actually Hopkins was as low as ours now like 6 years ago. I’m sure the institutional average is higher) so I’d imagine that by time of graduation they are similar to the others you mention, so no, getting good grades is not that hard at any of these. The content taught at many of these is quite challenging though (like MIT and Caltech) and like typical schools with lots of students being a science major, intro. courses curve to lower levels than most Ivy peers for example. The only thing these institutions have in common is that they grade on the C+/B- bell curve for a lot of their more intensive science courses whereas others grade more like at B/B+.

bernie12 · June 19, 2012, 11:02am

My bad, I looked up stuff and We are a tad higher than Hopkins now (not too significant though). The rumor about these schools being hard to get good grades at is kind of mythical. Many of them are certainly hard, but it’s not actually the grading that makes it so. As soon as students adjust to the level of work at such institutions (as in, working hard at a school like MIT and Caltech is a second nature task. Many of these students also already had experience with very tough coursework in the sciences in high school), grades come as easy as the other elites (or at least the Bs).

collegestu816 · June 22, 2012, 3:54pm

Unfortunately this has to do with Emory being the stereotypical Ivy reject school (along with Tufts) plus the relative lack of school spirit. Many of the top students who came in and are not Emory Scholars or receiving significant financial aid are ****ed that they didn’t get into an Ivy (unfortunately I was among this category as well), and you hear this type of complaining a lot among first semester freshmen. As in “I got all these national awards in HS and this crazy high SAT score but now it’s all pointless because I didn’t end up going to an Ivy.” You’ll also see freshmen wear clothing from top 10s which essentially labels them as a reject. That and the lack of school spirit leads an unusually high number of freshmen to try to transfer to Ivies or top LACs, and many do end up making it in. My roommate from freshmen year transferred to UVA (his state school) right after freshmen year because his parents weren’t paying for college and he had already taken out $40k in loans in just that one year, but that’s usually not the reason why most Emory students transfer.

There can be several reasons for this. The high number of premeds here means many who aren’t doing well many need to take an extra year to repair their GPA (since only about 51% of Emory premeds get into ANY med school each year). Also Emory’s joint engineering program with Tech takes 5 years instead of 4 so they could be counted in that 11%. And because a lot of people transfer out of Emory they also accept a lot of transfers coming in. Many of these people, especially those that transfer in as juniors, must take at least an extra year to complete the GERs and major requirements since not all their credits will transfer over. Finally the 200 Oxford transfers each year, which on average, are not as academically qualified as the average Emory main campus student (no offense but statistically this is how it works out) will be more likely to not meet the minimum 1.8 GPA needed for graduation. Most other top 20s do not have this type of feeder school.

Of course all of this is not to discourage anyone from coming to Emory. You have essentially the same chance at being successful here and getting a great education as at any other top 20. It all depends on what YOU choose to do or not do.

bernie12 · June 22, 2012, 4:22pm

I honestly feel like there are many other top schools not associated with a huge amount of school spirit, yet actually recruit students who actually appreciate what the place has. Emory recruits students that don’t care for anything but prestige. It needs to change. The “Ivy reject” attitudes of students going here is very stupid, and not even students at slightly less prestigious schools not known for school spirit have such a stuck up attitude and I am pretty sure many of them feel that they worked just as hard as people did here. It’s ironic you mention Tufts, because although it may be an Ivy reject school, students there are actually unique and don’t constantly harp on this idea that “they deserve better”. The bitterness just isn’t there, and it should not exist at Emory either. The school offers amazing things if you want it and is essentially the same as going to a “lower Ivy”. The only problem is students don’t care to realize this and take advantage of this fact.

Collegestu: Sorry, the Oxford thing is BS. They are often not the culprits. Wandering students on main are more likely to the culprit (as in those, who have trouble deciding a major or switching). Also, Chances are, if a person made it to main campus, they are probably going to graduate on time. The idea that THEY are the ones who are inclined to fail out is faulty. If anything a student going to Emory for 4 years is more likely to fail out due to a relatively (compared to Oxford) “hands-off” academic environment (as in much less faculty/prof. interaction/intervention) and significantly more external distractions that come with being on a larger campus (thus fraternities/overextension in clubs/activities) and closer to Atlanta city proper. Also, I think pre-meds who are in trouble usually just graduate and pursue post-bacs elsewhere. I don’t think they delay graduation so that they can pay a crap ton to retake classes or add some additional fluff courses to pad their GPAs. Emory cost too much for that, plus fin. aid post-4th year is not that great. As for the 51%, I’m beginning to wonder how I feel about it. The fact is, this is enevitable when you have like 360-400 applicants and you have students not as serious as those at say, Johns Hopkins (has about the same amount of applicants, but a 60-65% admit rate) about going into medicine, 51% isn’t even that bad (Emory pre-meds are so serious about doing well enough to get into med. school, that they choose coursework that make the average MCAT for a student with a 3.7, a 30. This is an embarrassment for a top school where students are supposed to test better. Fact is, many pre-meds deliberately choose to avoid preparing themselves). I think Emory should only have like 200 or so. Others should be encouraged to pursue something else either inside or outside of the sciences. Emory could use some diversity in the post-graduate plans of students anyway.

Why doe Emory have such Low Rates?

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