Do you know a student who wants to attend a college where there is ‘Big-time’ football program? Now that the BCS rankings are out and the Bowl game match-ups are decided, it is easy to find schools that match this criteria.
Admission Statistics, College Costs, & Graduation Rates
If you are the one paying for the education, you may want to see some other numbers in addition to the BCS rank – like how much do they cost and what are the odds that a student will graduate in four (or six) years from this institution. As part of our service when we work with students, we provide a list of colleges across the country – complete with admission statistics, college costs, and graduation rates. Since I am also a big football fan, I thought I would narrow this data down to the 2010 Top 25 BCS Rankings with College Graduation Rates.
Low 4 Year Graduation Rates
The thing that probably jumps out immediately to most people is the highs and the lows re: 4-year graduation rates. These numbers reflect the entire student body, not just the football players, so you can see how ‘normal’ students fare at these schools. At the high end is Stanford, with an 80% graduation rate in 4 years. At the low end is Boise State, in the single digit range at 6%.
A few other things you might notice include:
- the average 4-year graduation rate for these 25 schools is 35%, which is very close to the average of all schools in the U.S. (only 36%)
- Besides Stanford, only two other schools (TCU and Virginia Tech) have 4-year graduation rates at or above 50%
- Besides Boise State, two other schools (Nevada and Hawaii) have graduation rates below 20%, but we can all imagine there could be some additional nearby ‘distractions’ in those locations that aren’t available near other campuses
I’m all for having a great time in college following your local team, and people who know me know that I certainly have done my fair share – both during and after my college days. If you want to go to a ‘Big-time school’, just beware of the overall environment and be careful to set goals so that you aren’t one of the ones bringing these statistics down even further in the future.