Average Retention Rate At Massachusetts Colleges

The retention rate is the percentage of first-time students who attend and continue their study in next year at colleges. The low retention rate means that more students transfer out to or stop/pause the program at a school. In general, high ranked colleges or special purpose colleges' retention rate is higher than others.

The average retention rate of Massachusetts colleges is 76.21% for full-time students and 59.67% for part-time students. 48,122 out of 58,308 full-time first-year students continued their study in next year at Massachusetts colleges. In public Massachusetts colleges, the retention rate is 70% and private schools' rate is 79% By school levels, the retention rate at four-years colleges is 78% and community colleges' rate is 63% in Massachusetts.

The next schools are the top 5 Massachusetts colleges that have the highest retention rate. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has the highest retention rate of 99% among Massachusetts colleges. Northeastern University and Tufts University also have higher rate of 97% and 97% respectively. For the ranking, we exclude community colleges and four-colleges with less than 1,000 first-time students.

The following table summarizes the retention rate and number of students by attending status for Massachusetts collegesNumbers in parentheses in each column indicate the number of students in the corresponding category.