Pell Grants are federal grants awarded to low-income undergraduate students; the number of Pell Grant recipients is often used as a proxy for low-income student enrollment. The US Department of Education releases data annually for first-time, full-time freshmen enrollments and those students’ six-year graduation outcomes.
UC campuses compare favorably in both the share of Pell Grant recipients and six-year graduation rates when considering American Association of Universities (AAU) peers, California State University (CSU) campuses and a selection of other large state university systems.Across all types of institutions, campuses that enroll a higher proportion of Pell Grant recipients tend to have lower six-year graduation rates for those students.
While UC campuses follow this pattern, they consistently outperform campuses that have similar proportions of Pell grant recipients. On average, public AAU universities enroll fewer Pell recipients (21%) and have lower graduation rates (73%) for those students than the UC system. Private AAU institutions have a higher graduation rate for Pell recipients (90%) than the UC average but enrolled a very small proportion (15%) of Pell recipient students.
UC also compares favorably to other large state university systems. With the exception of UC Berkeley, none of the flagship campuses of the University of Michigan, the Ohio State University, the University of Texas, the University of Washington or the University of Wisconsin enrolled a larger proportion of new freshmen Pell recipients than any UC campus.
You can use the interactive table below to find the most recent data about any institution's enrollment and graduation rates by Pell recipient status.