Program Review Logic

Each summer semester, the Program Dashboards will be updated to include data for the previous year (the prior summer, and subsequent fall and spring semesters). Once ten years of data are available, when a new year is added each summer, the oldest year will be dropped to maintain a rolling ten year window in each table. The logic presented below is used to calculate the data for the respective metric.

All Years represented in the Program Metrics are academic years based upon the Summer, Fall, and Spring semesters (e.g. data for 2016/17 includes Summer 2016, Fall 2016, and Spring 2017).

Admissions Data:

• Includes first time degree, and non-degree to degree applicants.

Test Scores:

• For Test Scores and New Enrolled components, "NEW" is determined by the following:
  • For Graduate students (GR): first semester as a graduate student. For data from the data warehouse, the official enrollment table has the first semester as a graduate student field for use. For data from LionPATH, there is no equivalent field. The first semester is determined by merging all semesters for the student and selecting the first semester as a graduate student.
  • For Integrated program students (IP): first semester enrolled as an Integrated Program student.
  • DUAL Title Programs, the student must have the dual title added within that first year to be included in the NEW student metrics.
• For confidentiality purposes, if the count of new student enrollment in any year is one, test score(s) will not be displayed for that year and 'C' will be entered in the respective cell of the table, along with a footnote to explain. If there is more than one new student enrolled, test scores will be displayed, even if only one score is available, as it would not be attributable to an individual student.
• For students with multiple test scores, the maximum score per component is used.
• Scores for GRE tests taken before August 1, 2011 are converted using the following concordance table: https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/concordance_information.pdf

Total Enrolled:

• The official enrollment table is used to determine all registered students for the respective year (Summer, Fall, Spring), and the latest semester in which each student registered that year is used to determine the major.
• Dual Title Programs: The student semester table must have the DUAL title listed for any student in order for the respective student to be included in the headcount for enrollment that year.

Degrees Conferred:

• Dual Title Programs: if the semester table lists a dual title field for a student, and the main major field for that student is approved, it is assumed that the dual title field is also included as approved.

Time To Degree:

• In major/degree – median time to degree of all graduates in the major and degree. The time to degree is calculated from the beginning date of the first semester after admission to the major and degree to the ending dates of the semester the student receives the degree. If a student changes major and/or degree while pursuing his/her degree, the beginning date of the semester the student changes to new major/degree will be used to calculate time to degree.
• From First enrollment – median time to degree of all graduates in the major and degree. The time to degree is calculated from first enrollment as a graduate student at Penn State to the ending date of the semester the student receives the degree. If a student changes to a different major/degree, the beginning date for calculating time to degree will not change.
• Dual Title Programs: Time-to-degree for a student in a dual-title field is based on the time-to-degree for the entire integrated program, beginning with admission into the major field.

Degree Completion:

Degree Completion is re-calculated each year for all historical data.

• Dual Title Programs: the dual title program degree completion time is calculated based on when the student started in the major field. A dual title degree is a single degree titled in two fields. As such, the program of study for the degree includes the entire period from first admission into the major field, until degree completion in both fields. If a student adds a dual title, when Degree Completion is re-calculated, the starting cohort in the dual title field for the student will be the year the student started in the major field.
• The unofficial student table from the Data Warehouse is used to determine when each student started in his/her respective degree program.