Percentage of BJJ players that get promoted to each belt?

I remember reading somewhere that something like 88% of white belts never make it to blue. I wouldn't go around quoting me on that, but I'd totally believe it.
 
Here is a wild guess:

BJJ Blue Belt: 15% of all who initially sign up for BJJ class
BJJ Purple Belt: 3%
BJJ Brown Belt: 0.2%
BJJ Black Belt: 0.01%

What do you guys think?
 
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chaps said:
Here is a wild guess that will probably end up being way off.

BJJ Blue Belt: 15% of all who initially sign up for BJJ class
BJJ Purple Belt: 3%
BJJ Brown Belt: 0.2%
BJJ Black Belt: 0.01%

What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Way off.

At higher ranks, it becomes much more likely that you will advance to the next rank. You have only 5% of brown belts becoming black belts. That is way off. It's probably more like 75%+.

The biggest drop off is from white to blue, then blue to purple is also pretty big, and from there it becomes much more likely that you will keep going up.
 
There was a really good article out about this that had a pretty good breakdown, but I can not seem to find it.

At our school lets say we have 50 white belts starting at the same time. About 7 to 10 go to blue belt. The rest quit. Out of that 7 to 10 I would say about 3 to 4 make purple, because a lot of blue belts leave once they reach it. Most purples I think go to brown and than black which I was stated in the article.

The hardest part is making purple I think.
 
Balto said:
Way off.

At higher ranks, it becomes much more likely that you will advance to the next rank. You have only 5% of brown belts becoming black belts. That is way off. It's probably more like 75%+.

The biggest drop off is from white to blue, then blue to purple is also pretty big, and from there it becomes much more likely that you will keep going up.
Click to expand...

very good point.
 
If you have the commitment to make it to purple, you will probably stick with it. So I'd guess that 80% of purple

If you make it to brown, it's gotta be close to 100%
 
Devils Cut said:
If you have the commitment to make it to purple, you will probably stick with it. So I'd guess that 80% of purple

If you make it to brown, it's gotta be close to 100%
Click to expand...

Hmm 80% from purple to black seems a little high for me. I feel like purple might be when "life" starts getting in the way (Guy starts in early 20's, 5 years later has wife, kids, job, etc.)
 
I'd easily wager that over half of the white belts don't make it a month, and the vast majority don't go over a year. I would put the percentage that go all the way to blue belt at 1%.

From there, a few quit almost immediately and some stick but just never make it to purple - maybe they got the pity blue promotion. I'd say 10% of blues go purple.

Just to round out the wild guessing, I'd say a quarter of purples make brown and a quarter of browns make black.

So, I'll go with this:

White - 100% -- 1 out of 1
Blue - 1% -- 1 out of 100
Purple - 0.1% -- 1 out of 1000
Brown - 0.025% -- 1 out of 4,000
Black - 0.00625% -- 1 out of 16,000
 
Agreed by purple the drop out rate is pretty small.

Wouls like to see a school's stats, as I bet white to blue is Napoleon's Russian campaign bad, in the way of losing WBs
 
okyoureright said:
Hmm 80% from purple to black seems a little high for me. I feel like purple might be when "life" starts getting in the way (Guy starts in early 20's, 5 years later has wife, kids, job, etc.)
Click to expand...

I'm inclined to agree. From purple to brown seems like the transition that is often hardest to make for part timers. When I think if purple belts I've known, a decent portion of them could be categorized as your typical weekend warrior with above average training consistancy.

When I think of brown belts I've know, far fewer fall into that category. They've tended to be the guys that are training at one place & teaching at another, or are traveling realtively long distances to compete in high level tournaments, or are training muliple times per day for the majority of the week, etc.

I would agree that those who make it to that brown belt seem to almost always make it all the way to black. In fact, I think thats specifically mentioned in a 'what it means to be a brown belt' description that I've seen floating around the net.

Since there are so many reasons people might take a day/week/month of BJJ & then just quit, I almost think it'd be more interesting to get a sense of what percentage of blue belts advance to purple/brown/black. I.E. of those that do demonstrate interest in being involved in BJJ long term, how many make it all the way to black belt?

Of those that make it to blue, my own wild guess would be that around 10% make it to purple, around 3% make it to brown and around 2.5% make it to black [which would extrapolate to 30% of purples making it to brown & 83% of browns making it to black...I think...].
 
To be fair, some of the perception is skewed if you try to count the number of people who step in the door. I quit my first BJJ school because it was a huge factory. People there would've thought that I quit forever.
 
White to blue is probably the biggest, but my instructor told me before he feels that blue to purple is the biggest jump for those in it for the long run
 
Huge drop off rate from white to blue, larger drop off rate from blue to purple, and then the drop-out rates would get much, much smaller from there on.
 
primaxopt said:
To be fair, some of the perception is skewed if you try to count the number of people who step in the door. I quit my first BJJ school because it was a huge factory. People there would've thought that I quit forever.
Click to expand...

A much more succinct way of putting what I was getting at. If you counted everyone that takes even a single BJJ class at a given school, you arrive at a drop out rate that probably exaggerates the difficulty of achieving advancement to blue belt by including people that:
  • Leave to train somewhere else
  • Didn't really like BJJ and essentially had a 0% chance of advancing to their first belt
  • Liked the idea of training in BJJ, but weren't a fit for the environment of the school they tried it at
  • Could no longer train due to financial reasons
  • etc
 
claytongray said:
I'd easily wager that over half of the white belts don't make it a month, and the vast majority don't go over a year. I would put the percentage that go all the way to blue belt at 1%.

From there, a few quit almost immediately and some stick but just never make it to purple - maybe they got the pity blue promotion. I'd say 10% of blues go purple.

Just to round out the wild guessing, I'd say a quarter of purples make brown and a quarter of browns make black.

So, I'll go with this:

White - 100% -- 1 out of 1
Blue - 1% -- 1 out of 100
Purple - 0.1% -- 1 out of 1000
Brown - 0.025% -- 1 out of 4,000
Black - 0.00625% -- 1 out of 16,000
Click to expand...

Way too severe if you ask me.

More than 1% make it to blue belt
 
Balto said:
Way off.

At higher ranks, it becomes much more likely that you will advance to the next rank. You have only 5% of brown belts becoming black belts. That is way off. It's probably more like 75%+.

The biggest drop off is from white to blue, then blue to purple is also pretty big, and from there it becomes much more likely that you will keep going up.
Click to expand...

I would agree. If you count everyone who ever walks in the door, then white-blue attrition rate is huge, but for people who stay at least 6 months I imagine most of the fall off occurs at blue. I've seen so many people get their blue belts and then rarely if ever show up again, mostly because I think the pace of learning goes down and purple is very, very far away. I think most purple belts, unless they have some sort of life issue that prevents it, will go on to get their black belts. I can't think of a single person I know who gave up BJJ voluntarily after having gotten a purple belt. I'd guess:

-white belts who stay at least 6 months get to blue: 70%
-blue belts who get purple belts: 10%
-purple to brown: 80%
-brown to black: 95%

I think it would be very rare to see someone get a brown belt and then never go on to black. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, because when I do the math I'm suggesting that if you stay 6 months you have a 1/20 chance of going on to black belt, which seems high...though BJJ is still young in the US, and it takes a long time to get a black belt.
 
Anybody who makes purple belt has what it takes to make black belt, so the drop off is a lot less. The purples and browns who drop out, it is always one of two thing: Injury or rising time constraints (work/kids). Brown belts are already basically good enough to get black, they are just on probation, fixing a few things.

No question purple is the "real" belt in my book. Hardest to achieve, hardest to leave, fo sho.
 
The belief that purple and brown belts will eventually make it to bb is wrong. I know heaps of them that dropped off along the way
 
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