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Many of you (or at least your parents) will rush to newsstands to snag U.S. News & World Report's annual issue of "America's Best Colleges," eagerly flipping the pages to see if your choice schools made the rankings. But wait! Now there's a new way to compare colleges. Enter College Results Online (www.collegeresults.org), a free interactive Web tool launched by The Education Trust, a national nonprofit organization that works for the high academic achievement of all students.

This interactive site allows you to select any four-year public or private nonprofit college or university in the country and see how its Graduation rates -- broken down by students' race, ethnicity, and gender -- compare with those of similar institutions.

Graduation Matters
You might be surprised to learn just how many students don't finish what they started. "Only six out of 10 students who enroll at four-year schools graduate," says Kevin Carey, director of policy research for the Education Trust. "It's disturbing."

While you have many goals for your College Experience, isn't a key one to actually graduate and get your degree?

"If students aren't finishing, that's not success," emphasizes Carey. Ultimately, you're the one responsible for your education. But there are steps colleges can take to help or hinder your success -- steps like getting you actively involved on campus as early as freshman year, and emphasizing the quality of undergraduate teaching, for example. Some schools just don't make the cut. Now, they're being exposed.

Making Sense of the Numbers
Contrary to the U.S. News reports, which rank on one continuous scale, explains Carey, College Results Online allows you to compare a college to other similar schools -- in effect, comparing apples to apples. "This allows you to examine the graduation rates in context," he says.

For instance, Alcorn State University (Alcorn State, MS), a Historically Black University, has a 50 percent graduation rate -- below the national average of 63 percent. But when compared with similar schools, such as those with a high percentage of first-generation college students, that rate is high, says Carey.

Going Beyond the Data
Knowing the numbers isn't enough. After identifying 12 schools with high or improving graduation rates, the Education Trust joined forces with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities as well as the National Association of System Heads, and sent a team of investigators to those campuses to issue reports based on their findings. The goal? To learn from the leaders.

"A high rate says [a school] is focused on students and is designing programs to help them finish," says Carey.

Arellana's Story
Maybe you're not worried about finishing college once you get there. You've been planning on getting your degree your whole life, and nothing's going to stop your pursuit. You don't fit the category of dropout, so no worries, right?

Not so fast. Arellana Cordero, a 2004 grad of the University of New Mexico (UNM, Albuquerque, NM), was once in your shoes. She was her high school homecoming princess, a member of the honor roll, and a scholarship recipient. "I wasn't planning on not getting my degree," she says.

But the obstacles she faced in higher education were more than she bargained for. "Life got the better of me," she says. Fifteen credit hours shy of completing her degree at UNM, Arellana stopped schooling altogether. "It's a large university, which can be intimidating," she explains. "There was a lot of time and bureaucracy involved; I couldn't get into the classes I needed."

Since then, UNM has implemented a Graduation Project, which facilitated Arellana's getting into the classes she needed to graduate. As more attention is given to graduation rates, the Education Trust team hopes that kind of institutional effort will be made at lower-performing schools across the country.

"I imagine that some colleges won't like what they see," says Carey. "We hope the site will cause institutions to reflect on this data and improve."


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Robyn Tellefsen is a frequent contributor to The CollegeBound Network. Learn more about finding a school that's right for you.

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