Ivies Suck wrote:
People don't seem to understand that these exclusive universities do not fail students. Yale's graduation rate is 97% which includes these fake students as well as the real athletes, the legacies, and the large donors who may have SATs of 1200. If you show up and take the tests and hand your papers in, you will get a B. I have an uncle and aunt at Princeton who have confirmed this practice. They get pressure to not even give Cs unless there is a real problem.
This is largely correct. The harder it is to get into a college, the harder (generally) it is to fail out.
The top-ranked schools have to keep their graduation rates up and are loath to kick out anyone--in part because that would be "admitting" that the student had no business being there in the first place, in part because they want that high retention/graduation statistic so their ranking won't slip.
[Full disclosure: I managed to flunk out of an Ivy, but a) this was back in the 1970s, before USN&WR started its rankings, and b) I came back after a year and eventually graduated on time with a 3.xx cumulative average--at a time when the median graduate's GPA was 2.xx.]