The 20 top-ranked US colleges and universities with the most dropouts

Andy Kiersz

Jun 13, 2019, 19:10 IST

The 20 top-ranked US colleges and universities with the most dropouts

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Not everyone who starts college finishes on time.
We ranked the top schools on U.S. News & World Report's 2019 Best National Universities and Best National Liberal Arts Colleges lists by the share of students who did not complete their degrees within six years of starting college.
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Not everyone who starts college finishes on time.

We took the top 50 schools on U.S. News & World Report's 2019 Best National Universities and Best National Liberal Arts Colleges lists and found the share of first-time, full-time, degree-seeking undergraduate students who completed a four-year degree within six years for each school using data from the US Department of Education.

The group of students used in this analysis started college during the 2011-2012 school year, six years before the 2017-2018 year, the most recent year for which data was available.

We ranked the top-rated schools by the share of that group that did not complete a degree at the school within six years. That share includes students who withdrew, transferred to other schools, or did not finish within six years for some other reason.

Here are the 20 highly rated colleges and universities with the lowest six-year graduation rates:

20. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: 15.0% of students did not graduate within six years.

18. University of California – Irvine: 15.1% of students did not graduate within six years.

18. Pepperdine University: 15.1% of students did not graduate within six years.

17. Connecticut College: 15.2% of students did not graduate within six years.

16. University of California – San Diego: 15.5% of students did not graduate within six years.

15. Occidental College: 15.6% of students did not graduate within six years.

14. Gettysburg College: 16.4% of students did not graduate within six years.

13. New York University: 16.5% of students did not graduate within six years.

12. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: 16.6% of students did not graduate within six years.

11. Bryn Mawr College: 16.6% of students did not graduate within six years.

10. Tulane University: 16.6% of students did not graduate within six years.

9. Pitzer College: 16.9% of students did not graduate within six years.

8. University of Texas at Austin: 17.2% of students did not graduate within six years.

7. Case Western Reserve University: 17.4% of students did not graduate within six years.

6. Centre College: 17.7% of students did not graduate within six years.

5. University of California – Santa Barbara: 18.5% of students did not graduate within six years.

4. Trinity College: 19.0% of students did not graduate within six years.

3. Thomas Aquinas College: 20.7% of students did not graduate within six years.

2. United States Air Force Academy: 22.4% of students did not graduate within six years.

1. Sewanee-University of the South: 22.7% of students did not graduate within six years.

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