11/21/2025 – Among the more “meta” performance indicators tracked by the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) and OIERA are the rate of W, or withdrawal, grades.
While W grades are typically bundled as part of the “DWFI” cluster (D and F grades, W grades and Incompletes), each suggests a range of reasons why students earned, or ended up, with a DWFI. This is an opportunity to look more closely at W grades in relation to credits attempted, credits completed, and to explore whether there are significant differences across variables of gender, race/ethnicity and age. The goal of these smaller scale excavations is to get a sense of correlations of outcomes across time, and to hold ourselves accountable for student outcomes in general as well as indications that we may be able to target supports to ensure improved student outcomes overall.
There are several categories of “W” grades, some that indicate students are being proactive, and others that suggest students have stopped attending, or participating in, class.
The table below suggests there is a fairly consistent relation between the number of courses attempted and the number of courses completed. Additionally, it suggests that many First Time Freshmen (FTF) attempt the recommended five courses in their first semesters. What we cannot learn from these aggregate data is if those students attempting five courses are more or less likely to withdraw from one of their respective courses. Data shared in October indicates that nearly 50% of FTF who attempt 30 or more credits in their first two semesters drop at least one of those classes, compared to the approximately 35-40% of FTF who attempt 20 or more credits in their first two semesters.
| Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2024 | |||||||
| Coursesattempted | W Grades | Coursescompleted | Coursesattempted | W Grades | Coursescompleted | Coursesattempted | W Grades | Courses completed | |
| First Time Freshmen | 5.1 | 21% | 4.0 | 4.7 | 25.7% | 3.5 | 4.9 | 19.1% | 3.9 |
| All students | 4.2 | 17.4% | 3.4 | 3.8 | 19.9% | 3.0 | 3.9 | 15.2% | 3.3 |
Looking more closely at the data, there were small and consistent gender-based differences: over the three years of data, male students had a 2 percentage point (or 7-8%) higher W rate than female students. More notable was the difference between students who are 25 or younger compared to students who are older than 25 (about 40% of Hostos students):
| Fall 2022 | Fall 2023 | Fall 2021 | |||||||
| Coursesattempted | W Grades | Coursescompleted | Coursesattempted | W Grades | Coursescompleted | Coursesattempted | W Grades | Coursescompleted | |
| 25 and underFirst Time Freshmen | 5.2 | 22.8% | 4.0 | 4.8 | 27% | 3.5 | 5.0 | 19.8% | 4.0 |
| 25 and underAll students | 4.4 | 19.3% | 3.4 | 3.8 | 22.5% | 2.9 | 3.9 | 16.5% | 3.3 |
| Over 25First Time Freshmen | 4.6 | 12.3% | 4.1 | 4.1 | 17.1% | 3.4 | 4.4 | 14.9% | 3.7 |
| Over 25All students | 4.0 | 12.5% | 3.5 | 3.7 | 13.2% | 3.2 | 3.9 | 12.4% | 3.4 |
Here the difference between the rate of Ws earned by students 25 and under and students over 25 ranges between more than 45% and 25%. What might this mean? That First Year Experience (FYE) is that much more important for students 25 and under transitioning (nearly) directly from high school? That older students are more adept at evaluating their chances of succeeding in the long run and/or accessing support services? We don’t know and the significance of the gap between cohort outcomes is an opportunity to look further at course-enrollment patterns and the correlations between – for example – accessing HALC, or meeting regularly with advisors – that might help guide outreach and effort to ensure that if students earn W grades, these are a strategic decision and not a default outcome.
