Universities struggle to raise retention rates among first-year students. Traditional analyses have not only focused on large-scale issues and addressed the needs of the majority but also done little to change overall retention numbers. The current study demonstrates the benefit of using a person-centered approach to retention research. Latent profile analysis was used to examine all nonretained, first-year students (n = 515) from the 2011 cohort at a private, research-intensive university. The larger population of nonretained first-year students appeared to contain several smaller, subpopulations, and these smaller groups differed on key variables collected by the university. The differences in the subpopulations indicate a need for greater specificity in retention programming.
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