Several factors contribute to the college retention rates of black students. There could be issues related to the student's own personality attributes, personal and/or family circumstances, financial factors, background events, social factors, as well as a myriad of institutional factors associated with the school system and/or a particular school itself. This paper identifies a set of 14 retention variables and categorizes them into three composite units, which are then used to address the issue of whether the various retention parameters affect black male students differently as much as they affect black female students in regard to their continuity decisions.