Going off to college is a huge milestone in many people’s lives – but making it to graduation day isn’t guaranteed. In fact, graduation rates vary wildly from state to state – so we wanted to see the odds for graduation rates for students from each state. 

Looking at graduation rates across the USA, according to FutureFit, students enrolled in public universities within can expect around an 85% graduation rate on a six-year timeframe. Private and non-profit universities show a lower rate of 60%, while private for-profit colleges come in at just 25%.

So how do graduation rates measure up across the country? Will the Southern states dominate, or are you more likely to succeed if you’re coming from a big-city state? We're expert odds makers as well as casino site reviewers here, so we dove into the numbers to find out. 

The Most Likely to Graduate from College

The capital takes the crown in our ranking. By a wide margin, Washington, D.C. is the state where students are most likely to graduate, with an astonishing 63.05% graduation rate. That’s almost a full 20 percentage points above the next-best state! 

That state in question is Massachusetts, home to some of the country’s best schools like Harvard and MIT, which boasts a 46.62% graduation rate. 

In fact, some of the states with the most esteemed colleges and universities also have a correspondingly high graduation rate. According to Forbes, Princeton University in New Jersey is the best Ivy League university in the country, and we find New Jersey at spot number 5 in our ranking.

Other states that fared well included Vermont, with 44.44% graduation rate, and Colorado right on their tail at 44.42%. 

The least likely to graduate from college

Unfortunately, the Southern states don’t fare so well in our ranking. The top five states where you’re least likely to graduate from college are all Southern states - namely West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Kentucky. Alabama and Oklahoma also feature in the top 10, along with Nevada and Indiana. 

Unfortunately, West Virginia is the college with the worst odds of graduating from college, at just 24.12%. That’s followed by Mississippi – home of ‘Ole Miss’, the University of Mississippi, where the percentage of graduates stands at around 24.78%. 

While it’s technically not a state, students in Puerto Rico also doesn’t have great odds for making it to graduation day, at 28.48%. So there you have it – those are the best and worst states for graduating. Did your state feature, and was it good or bad news? If you’re feeling defensive of your home state or your alma mater, let us know on social! 

Methodology

For this campaign, we found the number of people with a bachelor’s degree from each state. We divided this number by the population (25+ years old) of their state in order to get a percentage of graduates from each state. We then ranked each state in order of most likely to graduate from college, based on our percentage.