Steven

The official number is that we have about a 70% freshman retention rate (all of these statistics can be found here: http://www.evergreen.edu/institutionalresearch/ ) Of course, these statistics don’t include things like students who decide to take a few quarters off to gain residency or students who go join things like AmeriCorps to get tuition discounts. While this number seems low, my boss in the admissions office says its the highest in the state of Washington.

As for what I have personally noticed, I have seen a few of students who come here for reasons that someone shouldn’t pick a school (like no grades or wanting to party a lot or something) and then realizing that things aren’t as they had though it would be and it’s not as easy as it might seem and they end up leaving. There are also some people who come here and can’t let go of the traditional school teaching/learning thing and have to leave because it just doesn’t work for them and they need that structure that they are used to. These are all pretty rare though, the majority of students love it and flourish academically and socially. The numbers of students who leave also goes way down after freshman year as well. The students who make it through freshman year and want to continue, usually continue all the way through the rest of their college career. I have experienced a couple experienced a couple instances of students dragging the rest of the class down because they did not care to be there but they ended up leaving withing a couple weeks.

I hope this answered all of you questions, let me know if you have anymore. And sorry about the delayed response, this week has been crazy!