Key takeaways:
- One in five first-year students in the US has a GPA below 2.0 and fewer than 2% of those who reach academic probation ever complete a degree.
- At-risk status isn't evenly distributed, New Majority Learners are significantly overrepresented.
- An independent study found a 29% reduction in dropout intent among students using Genio Notes.
- Students who started the semester below a 2.0 GPA improved by +1.35 GPA, a 93.5% increase, after using Genio Notes.
One in five first-year students in the US begins college at serious risk of not finishing it.
For this to be the reality across the country as a whole, dropout poses a serious structural challenge. It is the core concern at the center of every enrollment, retention, and student success conversation happening in higher education right now.
Among students who fall into academic probation, fewer than 2% ever complete a degree or credential. Once that threshold is crossed, the path forward narrows dramatically.
The question institutions are grappling with isn't whether to act. It's what actually moves the needle.
Which students are most at-risk?
At-risk status doesn't fall evenly across the student population. Certain learner groups are significantly more likely to enter academic probation, and the reasons why are essential to understand to be able to design effective support.
First-generation college students are disproportionately represented. Without family experience navigating higher education, many arrive underprepared for the cognitive demands of university-level study. This is not because of a lack of ability, but because they were never explicitly taught how to learn at this level.
Effective notetaking, self-regulated study, and active engagement with course material are skills that have to be built. For students who haven't had that scaffolding, the gap quickly becomes apparent.
Students with disabilities face compounding challenges. 65% of students who had accommodations in high school don't request them in college. That's a significant and largely invisible support gap, driven by unfamiliarity with institutional processes, stigma, or simply not knowing help exists. Without the tools they relied on before, these students are absorbing the full cognitive load of lectures and coursework without the scaffolding they need to succeed.
“I have ADHD and sometimes I feel like I spend the whole lecture trying to make sure I get all the notes written down, instead of actually listening and learning. Genio Notes gives me the ability to record my lectures easily and take notes where they connect to the speaking the professor is doing. This is almost like my safety net.” Brianna Velez, Student at Marquette University
New Majority Learners (working students, parents, and English as an additional language learners) represent another cohort that institutions frequently underserve. Balancing employment or caregiving alongside a full course load leaves little room to course-correct when academic challenges arise. These students often have the motivation; what they lack is time and the right tools.
What unites these groups isn't a deficit in potential. It's a lack of targeted, timely support at the moments when it would make the most difference.
How does Genio Notes help at-risk students stay in school?
Genio Notes is built on a straightforward premise: learning is a skill, and like any skill, it can be taught, practiced, and improved. For at-risk students in particular, that framing matters. Passive access to content isn't enough, what changes outcomes is proactive participation, the right level of productive friction, and structured engagement with course material.
In an independent study conducted by LXD Research, the number of students seriously considering dropping out fell from 99 to 71 between winter and spring assessments marking a 29% reduction in dropout intent among students using Genio Notes. For institutions where every retained student represents both a human outcome and a financial one, 29% is a significant impact.
The academic performance data tells a similar story. The 2025 Genio Learner Impact Report found that students entering the semester with a GPA below 2.0 improved by an average of +1.27 GPA, a 79% increase. Likewise, in the 2026 edition, that figure climbed further as the same cohort saw a +1.35 GPA improvement, a 93.5% increase.
"I started out with a 2.0 GPA, and by the end of the semester, I was at a 3.2" - Sara Souder, Student at Fresno City College
Crucially, this isn't a one-off result driven by a favorable cohort or a single institution. The consistency across multiple years of study, across different student populations, points to a repeatable effect that institutions can plan around.
The mechanism is grounded in learning science. Genio Notes acts to reduce cognitive load during lectures, allowing students to stay present rather than scrambling to capture everything. Study tools support the kind of active retrieval that actually consolidates learning while the built-in Confident Notetaker's Masterclass builds the foundational study skills that help students show up more prepared over time.
The result isn't just improved grades. It's students who are more confident, more engaged, and more likely to persist.
What can institutions do now to support at-risk students?
For student success leaders and institutional decision-makers, at-risk students aren't a problem to be managed after the fact. They're a population that responds to the right intervention, and Genio Notes is among the most evidence-backed tools available to deliver it.
Institutions that have deployed Genio Notes are seeing measurable improvements in persistence, GPA, and dropout intent, particularly among the students who needed support most. At a time when retention metrics are under scrutiny and the cost of student attrition is increasingly hard to absorb, that's worth a closer look.
Want to see how Genio Notes supports student persistence at your institution?
