Average Retention Rate At Virginia 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 Virginia colleges is 68.54% for full-time students and 53.66% for part-time students. 47,413 out of 61,019 full-time first-year students continued their study in next year at Virginia colleges. In public Virginia colleges, the retention rate is 68% and private schools' rate is 75% By school levels, the retention rate at four-years colleges is 74% and community colleges' rate is 60% in Virginia.

The next schools are the top 5 Virginia colleges that have the highest retention rate. University of Virginia-Main Campus has the highest retention rate of 97% among Virginia colleges. William & Mary and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University also have higher rate of 93% and 92% 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 Virginia collegesNumbers in parentheses in each column indicate the number of students in the corresponding category.