Evidence before interpretation
What the numbers mean
The College Ledger uses public, aggregate institution-level data. No private student records or employer files are used.
- First-year retention
- Full-time retention at four-year institutions: the share of first-time, full-time bachelor's-degree-seeking students from the prior fall who returned or completed by the next fall. It is not the retention rate for all enrolled students.
student.retention_rate.four_year.full_time · RET_FT4 - Graduation within 150% of normal time
- Completion at four-year institutions for the first-time, full-time cohort within 150% of normal program time—typically six years for a bachelor's degree. It does not describe all transfer or part-time students, and should not be read as completion anywhere after transfer.
completion.completion_rate_4yr_150nt · C150_4 - Undergraduate enrollment
- Enrollment of undergraduate certificate/degree-seeking students, not total institutional enrollment including graduate students.
student.size · UGDS - Reporting years and historical change
- The annual files cover 2021–22 through 2025–26; the selector uses each file’s starting year. They are not entering-cohort years. The retrieved release contains 2024 observations for these measures but no 2025 observations. The 2024–25 filename does not mean a fall 2025 observation. Different metrics describe different reference periods and cohorts. Missing values are never backfilled.
- Peer median
- Unweighted median of available values for the selected comparison schools, excluding the focus institution. No enrollment weighting or statistical adjustment is applied. A change in the peer set changes the benchmark. “pp” means percentage points, not percentage growth.