The people who graduate from college go to the colleges that graduate people — the plainest rule from my decade in college-access work. Every bar below is a slice of the students who started at 4-year colleges nationwide, ordered by their college's completion rate; bar width shows how many students sit in each slice. Drag the slider and watch how many seats are at colleges where most students never finish.
| Completion rate | Students who started | Students who graduated | Share who graduated |
|---|
Data: IPEDS graduation-rate figures for students who started college in 2021-2023, U.S. Department of Education, with those three years' worth of students pooled together. Figures for a racial or ethnic group are hidden where fewer than 30 students in that group are in the data. Selectivity tiers are calculated by this site from admission rate and test-score midpoints.