Just the Facts: Colleges with the Highest Freshman Retention

Yale University

According to US News & World Report, as many as one in three freshmen don’t make it back for sophomore year. Although money problems tend to dominate, the reasons a student may choose not to return to school range from basic loneliness to academic struggles.

While colleges are quick to explain away low freshman retention by blaming federal methodology, it’s still a good metric to include in your college search. If it looks too low, don’t hesitate to ask what the college is doing to improve.

Locally, Johns Hopkins (97%), the University of Virginia (97%), Georgetown (96%), William & Mary (95%), University of Maryland (94%), George Washington University (92%), and Virginia Tech (92%) are consistently among the schools with high freshman retention.  And note that Maryland, GW, and Tech showed improvement in their retention rates over last year.

Thanks to a sneak preview from USNWR of this year’s CDS results, here are the colleges with the highest freshman retention rates:

• Columbia University (99%)
• Yale University (99%)
• Brown University (98%)
• California Institute of Technology (98%)
• Dartmouth College (98%)
• MIT (98%)
• Princeton University (98%)
• Stanford University (98%)
• University of Chicago (98%)
• University of Notre Dame (98%)
• University of Pennsylvania (98%)
• Duke University (97%)
• Harvard University (97%)
• Johns Hopkins University (97%)
• Northwestern University (97%)
• Rice University (97%)
• Tufts University (97%)
• UC Berkeley (97%)
• UCLA (97%)
• UNC-Chapel Hill (97%)
• University of Southern California (97%)
• University of Virginia (97%)
• Vanderbilt University (97%)
• Washington University in St. Louis (97%)