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Undergraduate Graduation & Retention Rates
When available, use the filters to the right of each dashboard page for graduation and retention rates by various categories. Or, click on the navigation boxes/arrows that appear at the top of each dashboard page for a brief guided tour through the data.
Download this data here (Last updated on December 16, 2024)
Sources & Methodology:
- This graduation and retention rate data is available in Berkeley's data warehouse reporting system, Cal Answers. For each cohort of entering undergraduate students, we count the total elapsed time to graduation of each student, not just semesters in which they're actually enrolled. Students who graduate in a summer term are grouped with those graduating in the immediately preceding spring semester for counting purposes. For retention rates, we check whether each student is enrolled in either the census or end-of-term snapshots for the equivalent term one year later. For example, for a student in the Fall 2014 entering cohort, a "retained for 1 year" status indicates that the student was enrolled (or had already graduated in rare cases) in Fall 2015.
- These are Berkeley-only graduation rates, so students who leave Berkeley and then graduate from another university are still counted as not graduated.
- Note that some bars may not sum exactly to 100%, due to rounding.
- The "Underrepresented Minority" ethnicity category includes students who self-identify as African American, Asian Underrepresented, Chicanx/Latinx, Native American/Alaska Native, or Pacific Islander. The "Asian Non-Underrepresented" ethnicity category includes students who self-identify as Asian, except for underrepresented groups. The "International" category includes non-US citizens/non-permanent residents; these students are not counted under specific ethnicities in accordance with federal reporting requirements. The "White/Other" ethnicity category includes students who self-identify as White or do not provide information.
- The Residency data shown for retention rates is a student's official "demographic" residency, and so may not reflect the actual tuition and fees that a given student pays after various waivers are applied.
Notes on Other Available Data:
- The National Center for Education Statistics (often referred to as "IPEDS," the name of their primary data collection program for postsecondary institutions) does publish graduation and retention rates, but they include only those students who enter in a fall semester as new freshmen. This approach ignores about a third of Berkeley's entering classes (those who are transfer students and those who start in a spring semester).
- The UC Information Center also publishes graduation and retention rates. They only include students who enter in the Fall term, however, and only consider retention in the context of the student census, rather than both census and end of term.
- You can find more detail about UC Berkeley's graduation rates in the following reports: Factors Related to Graduation Rates: Freshman Entrants, Factors Related to Graduation Rates: Transfer Entrants, Freshman Graduation Rates: Elapsed Versus Enrolled Time, and Diversity Data Dashboard.