Will you actually finish? Reading graduation and retention rates
Getting in is the part everyone focuses on. Whether a school's students finish is public, federal, and a better predictor of what your degree costs.
The question we keep seeing
“Two schools admitted me and one has a much higher graduation rate. How much should that matter?”
The short answer
- The headline figure is the share of first-time, full-time students who finished within six years — not four.
- A student who transfers out and graduates elsewhere counts against the first school, however well things went for them.
- An extra year or two of tuition is the real cost of a low completion rate, and it rarely shows up in any price comparison.
Admissions statistics describe the front door. Completion statistics describe whether people get out the other side, and they are published for every institution that takes federal student aid.Footnote 1Source 1U.S. Department of Education — College Scorecard dataPublishes institution-level completion rates, including the share of first-time, full-time students completing within 150% of normal time, alongside retention, cost and earnings.collegescorecard.ed.gov
What the number counts
The standard federal figure is the share of a starting cohort that completed within 150% of normal time — six years for a four-year degree. Not four. If you are budgeting for four, the six-year rate is already telling you something about how often that plan survives contact with reality at that school.
Three things it does not tell you
- Transfers are counted as failures. The cohort is first-time, full-time students at that institution. Someone who moves to another school and graduates there still counts against the school they left.
- Part-time and returning students are outside the cohort entirely. At institutions where those students are the majority, the published rate describes a minority of the campus.
- It reflects who enrolled as much as what the school does. Schools admitting students with more financial room behind them post higher completion rates partly for that reason. Comparing two schools with similar intakes is far more informative than comparing across very different ones.
Turning it into money
A completion rate is a cost estimate in disguise. If finishing routinely takes five years rather than four, then the real price of that degree is five years of cost of attendance plus a year of earnings you did not have — against a school where four years is the norm. That gap can swamp a difference in sticker price. Here is how to work out what a school actually costs.
None of this makes a lower-completion school a bad choice. It makes it a choice to go into with a plan: who your adviser is, what the course sequence for your major looks like, and what happens if one required class is full.
Katalyna shows completion and retention alongside cost and admissions for every school on your list, and tracks how they have moved, in college matching.
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Completion, retention, cost and admissions for every school on your list.
Frequently asked
The standard federal figure is six years for a four-year degree — 150% of normal time. Many schools also publish a four-year rate, and the gap between the two is worth looking at.
Yes. The cohort follows first-time, full-time students at that institution, so someone who transfers out and graduates elsewhere is counted as not completing — even though they finished.
Compare it against schools with similar intakes rather than to a fixed threshold. A sharp drop between the first and second year is the signal worth asking about, whatever the absolute number.