Data from the Iowa State University Office of Enrollment Research and Analytics reveals the top ten courses failed or withdrawn (The DFW Rate) of the 2023 fall semester.

“The DFW Rate is the percentage of students getting a D+, D, D-, F, or withdrawing from a course,” Jonathan Compton, Iowa State’s data analyst, said. 

The class on the list with the largest enrollment is C E 274 Engineering Statics, which started with 725 students and had approximately 377 finish and pass with a C- or higher. 

The class with the next highest enrollment was COM S 311 Introduction to the Design and Analysis of Algorithms, which started the semester with 258 students and had approximately 153 of those students finish and pass with a C- or higher. 

All other courses on the list had enrollment between 50 and 142. 

Chemistry had the most classes on the list, bringing three CHEM classes to the top 10 list, including CHEM 324 (Introductory Quantum Mechanics), CHEM 332 (Organic Chemistry II) and CHEM 231 (Elementary Organic Chemistry).

“I won’t lie, this class [CHEM 231] intimidates me, but along with the unnerving emotion, there’s a spark to success and learn,” Lauren Glover, a sophomore in dietetics and current CHEM 231 student, said. “My only hope is that the spark continues to burn bright through the rigorous course load.” 

With a total of 96 students, SPAN 97 (Accelerated Spanish Review) was the highest failed or withdrawn course by percentage. Altogether, approximately 41 students passed the course in the fall. 

SPAN 97 is a no-credit course that fulfills the foreign language requirement at Iowa State. The profile of a student who takes the course is someone who has taken two years of high school Spanish. The student then finds out they should have taken three to fulfill the foreign language requirement for their major at Iowa State. A student with two years of Spanish in high school cannot take SPAN 101 (Elementary Spanish l).

“It’s my opinion that many students take the class because as long as they pass the class with a D- or better, the language requirement is fulfilled, and their GPA is unaffected,” Julie Wilhelm, SPAN 97 professor, said. “For many students, there is not much incentive to do better than the minimum necessary. I also think the title, ‘Accelerated Spanish Review,’ leads students to think that the class is easy because of the word review and my assessment of the high rates of D, D- or F is because the grade is not figured into the GPA.”

Following SPAN 97 was C E 274 (Engineering Statics) with about a 48% fail or withdrawal rate, and COM S 311 (Introduction to the Design and Analysis of Algorithms) with about a 41% rate. 

Instructors encouraged students to reach out to their instructors if they are struggling in a course.