New Information on College: 4-Year Colleges Graduate 53% of Students in 6 Years 100% of the Time
We got a laugh out of this WSJ article titled “College: The Longer You Stay the More It Costs”. Usually it’s the New York Times that tells us what we already know, but it must have been a lazy June week for the Wall Street Journal. If you’re a college student you may have heard some of your friends mention their enrollment in the 7-year program. Unless they plan on going to med school or something, they’re probably one of the 47% of college students that take more than 6 years to graduate. And duh, it’s not like after four years you can stop paying tuition, so thanks for the information on college Captain Obvious of the Wall Street Journal.
The study that provided these statistics revealed some surprising info when it came to which colleges had the worst 4-year graduation rates. Colleges that on paper seem very similar in terms of competitiveness, student body, and tuition had huge variances in the percentage of students graduating within 4-years. What gives? Maybe some schools are more fun and students want to stick around a little longer. Yeah, but for an extra $50, 000 and three more years of your life, those have to be some pretty wild parties.
Take Bennington College in Vermont and Trinity College in nearby Connecticut for example. On our compare tool, they match up with very similar rigorous acceptance requirements. However, Bennington’s rate for students that graduate within 6 years is a low 57% compared to Trinity’s 87%.
As a high school senior applying to college you’re probably not thinking about your risk of dropping out, or that this data even applies to you. Be that as it may, this study exemplifies how colleges can look identical on paper but translate into completely different experiences.
Insider info, like our college reviews and alternative sources of information on college, like our MatchMe Search can help you get a more complete perception of what life is like at specific colleges. Yes, this may be a shameless plug but this story caught our eye and we couldn’t help but think of how awesome our tools are for distinguishing between universities that seem to be almost identical but provide radically different college experiences.
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This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
