AB
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Data ElementDefinition
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Academic Year (AY)Unless otherwise indicated, an academic year is defined as terms of summer, fall, spring. This order of terms is utilized because when reporting counts, we want to include Vet Med, as well as Pharmacy students who start in the summer. In addition, this is the term order utilized for ASPPH reporting requirements.
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AgeAge is calculated based on the first day of the month matriculation for a given Program as defined by Admit Term from the University's PeopleSoft Data Warehouse (Spring = 2/01, Summer = 7/01, Fall = 10/01) minus the student's birthdate from their SOPHAS application.
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Application StatusThe status of an individual's distinct application, which is based on SPH ID, SPH.APPS.DEGREE_SOUGHT, SPH.APPS.MAJOR_ID, SPH.APPS.FIRST_TERM, and SPH.APP_STATUS.STATUS. Application Status options:

I. Not Admitted

• Incomplete - The application has been submitted to SPH and verified by SOPHAS, but is missing application requirements.

• Applied - The application is considered complete according to the SPH Coordinator for Applications and Admissions. There is a date field in WebAdmit that indicates an application is complete. When complete, the application is then routed to the program coordinator within the division.

• Denied* - The application has been denied.

• Withdrawn by Admin* - WADM in both PS and SID: In PeopleSoft, WADM means that the application was administratively withdrawn by the school. This becomes the application status if the program coordinators withdraw the application (e.g., a student misses a deadline or doesn't meet certain qualifications, student applies to wrong program b/c of location), which usually occurs before admission, though there are exceptions. The coordinator would inform the Coordinator for Applications and Admissions and s/he would manually update to WADM. WADM would be a terminal value for a given application.

• Withdrawn by Applicant - In PeopleSoft: WAPP, reason code of CNST. In SID: WAPP. In PeopleSoft, WAPP CNST means that the application was withdrawn by the student. This becomes the application status if a student withdraws their application. For now, this could also include students who decline at any time - including after being admitted. However, according to the Coordinator for Applications and Admissions, this definition could eventually change. Also, if a student had become a current student but later stops their SPH program, see "SPH Status" definition instead. Note that this could be a terminal value at any point, even if a student hasn't been admitted. This status is available from WebAdmit.

II. Admitted

• Admitted, Decision Pending - This is an offer made, but the student has not responded with an accept or decline, nor has their application been revoked. Note: Prior to academic year 2017-18, students who were offered admission but never responded to their admission letter were manually flagged as WADM, though some coordinators flagged them as Declined. However, starting with 2017-18 academic year, SPH now manually flags these students to ADRV status instead.

• Declined* - In PeopleSoft: WAPP – reason code of CNAA. In SID: DECL. In PeopleSoft, WAPP CNAA means that an applicant withdrew their admission offer, essentially declining SPH's offer. Note that if a student declines, s/he doesn't obtain / move to a corresponding "SPH Status." Students can also move into Decline students if the student had at one point been in DEIN or MATR status, and then the Coordinator for Applications and Admissions would manually change them to Declined. This Declined option is based off decision status (vs. “withdrawn” options below). However, also note that in the past, some coordinators would flag students as Decline if the student was offered admission but never responded to their admission letter (whereas others would flag them as WADM).

• Intent to Matriculate - DEIN. Final application status for applicants who intend to matriculate into a program for a given entry term, but not the terminal status for those students who then go on to matriculate.

• Admission Revoked* - ADRV. If the student doesn't show up two weeks into the term, PeopleSoft auto-updates the student’s record from MATR to ADRV. This is in the Applications page in PeopleSoft (for what the Coordinator for Applications and Admissions utilizes). While this is likely a terminal value, it’s not always the case – e.g., a student registers for a 2nd half of term course, etc. – this would need to be addressed manually within PeopleSoft. For now, the logic / data to identify this status pulls from SID; however, in the future, there may be a change to the nightly process from PS to SPH DW to see if there are any updated ADVR values and if so, to pull these in.

III. Matriculated

• Matriculated - MATR. Students stay in DEIN status until a certain designated date (e.g., 3/18) in which a batch update moves them to MATR status. There likely won’t be any updates to MATR until the designated date, but there may be others that were manually updated. If anyone responds to SPH that they are DEIN (intent to matriculate), then after the designated date, the Coordinator for Applications and Admissions would have to manually update the student to MATR, setup the student’s enrollment appointment (in order to be able to register for classes), etc. A successful application / applicant should “end” at MATR status (and then see above ‘Current’ SPH status). For now, the logic / data to identify this status doesn't pull in (and isn't reflected in Tableau dashboards); however, in the future, there may be a change to the nightly process from PS to SPH DW to see if there are any updated MATR values and if so, to pull these in.

Other:
• Defer - The applicant asks permission to defer start to another term. In this scenario, this application’s terminal value would be Defer for their original application. Then the Coordinator for Applications and Admissions creates a new application on the student’s behalf (e.g., for their new first term), and the new record has the applicant's deposit tied to it. Effective AY 2018-19, Applications/Applicants who defer are excluded from the term they originally apply for. Instead, Applications/Applicants who defer are included in the counts for their new intended entry term.

Notes:
Data for Application Status is displayed data back to 2008 Academic Year. Going back further would require data mapping since the Application Status values have changed. Once an application cycle closes, we should expect to see very few applicants with a status of "Applied" or "Admitted" and these are not terminal application values. When comparing Application Status counts in Tableau to those reported through SOPHAS, the numbers will be different because:
(1) these views report all applicants for a given entry term, which could come from multiple SOPHAS application cycles;
(2) SOPHAS numbers do not include "manual" applicants;
(3) for the current application cycle, the numbers here will only include those records already imported into SID.

* Prior to 2017, applicants who received an offer of admission but neither declined nor accepted their offer were left in a nebulous state. Moreover, the disposition of these offers was then handled in an inconsistent manner with each program choosing how to reclassify these admitted, but non-responsive applicants. Most programs would administratively move these to a “decline” status, while some would reclassify these and administratively withdraw their non-respondents. Students who were “administratively withdrawn” were moved to a not admitted status, much as if they had never received an offer of admission in the first place. Applicants who were moved to a “decline” status artificially inflated the rate of declines. While non-responses are essentially passive declines to our offer, they also do not fully reflect student decision-making. As such, beginning with the 2016-2017 cycle all “Admitted – Decision Pending” (no response) students had their offer of admission administratively revoked by the SSC. This is to ensure there is a single, consistent manner in which these applicants are handled, and to remove the random application of status changes that previously occurred. As a result, moving forward the representation of admitted students and non-admitted students will more correctly reflect actual numbers. In AY2018-19 we will also update admissions policies and specifically include a provision for revoking admission, and delineating a procedure within the policy that specifies how the school and programs will handle “Admitted – Decision Pending” students.
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CitizenshipCitizenship is based on citizenship country. If citizenship country is null, it is based on permanent country. If permanent country is null, it is based on current country. If all values are null, then it is considered unknown. This is derived from SOPHAS data. Those with a citizenship status of "US Permanent Resident" are represented based on the citizenship country they report, whether US or another country.
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Decline informationIf a student is accepted but declines the offer, then s/he provides decline-related responses indicating why s/he declined (note that one can select more than one available option). If his/her decline reason is because she's chosen another university, then the individual indicates the other school as well (currently a free-form text field). The School of Public Health started collecting this data during the 2007/2008 academic year.
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GenderThe individual's gender as captured in their SOPHAS application and stored in SPH.PEOPLE. Note that SOPHAS captures gender, not sex.
• Female
• Male
• Unknown
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GPA (undergraduate)An applicant's undergraduate Grade Point Average (GPA) score as available from SOPHAS. Not all applications contain undergraduate GPA information (roughly 60-70% of all applicants report undergraduate GPA each year). SOPHAS changed the method of how they report GPA for the 2011 cycle and therefore the analyses provided only go back that far.

Numbers represented within Tableau dashoards are average GPA of undergraduate education at the time of application, reported by applicants on each application (identified uniquely by SPH_ID + DEGREE_SOUGHT + MAJOR_ID + FIRST_TERM) found in SPH.SCORES. This data does not include WES values for international students.
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GPA (graduate)An applicant's graduate Grade Point Average (GPA) score as available from SOPHAS. Not all applications contain graduate GPA information. SOPHAS changed the method of how they report GPA for the 2011 cycle and therefore the analyses provided only go back that far.

Numbers represented within Tableau dashoards are average GPA of graduate education at the time of application, reported by applicants on each application (identified uniquely by SPH_ID + DEGREE_SOUGHT + MAJOR_ID + FIRST_TERM) found in SPH.SCORES. This data does not include WES values for international students.
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Graduating / Graduated StudentFor a given Student Plan, this is determined based on the confer date (which could be in the past or future) and completion term, both from the UMN DW. For this purpose, an academic year is defined as July 1 - June 30.
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GRE ScoresGraduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. Note that raw GRE score data may have certain limitations, as historic raw GRE score data is not standardized and may include outliers and discrepancies within the data. Not all SPH programs require GRE scores, and therefore, not all applications have this data available (between 70 and 80% of all applicants report GRE scores each year).

Numbers represented within Tableau dashboards are average GRE scores of each application based on SPH_ID, DEGREE_SOUGHT, MAJOR_ID, FIRST_TERM, and STATUS found in SPH.APPSCOTRA_VIEW. Because of a change in how SOPHAS reported GRE test date starting with Fall 2014, the GRE analyses only go back that far. They also only include data for applicants who took the GRE on August 1, 2011, or later because of a change in the scoring methodology.

Additional fields available in the underlying datasets ("Application Counts" and "Current Student Counts" workbooks) include gre_a, gre_v, gre_q (analytical, verbal and quantitative, respectively).
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Incoming StudentFor a given Student Plan, this is determined based on the student's "first term" as submitted via their SOPHAS application. In other words, if the student's application's "first term" value corresponds to the term (and degree and major) of interest / in question and the final status on the application is "DEIN" or "MATR", then s/he would be considered an Incoming Student.
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Program Status In Tableau, counts show where students (who had intended to matriculate that year) are in their program as of today or for the specified reporting date. As an example, the "Active" column, with current and all prior entry terms selected, represents total number of students from that matriculation year who are still active in their program as of today or the specified reporting date (potentially with a 24 hour lag). Tableau reports do not show how many students were active, not active, or not yet matriculated by academic year, but rather how many students were currently active, not active, or not yet matriculated by matric year for the specified reporting date.

Where do the numbers come from?
Numbers represent student counts based on emplid and academic plan found in the University's data warehouse PS_DWSA_PROG_DTL (UMN-DW), matched to SPH.APPSTAT_VIEW (SPH-DW)
- where acad_plan_type is either 'MAJ' or 'CRT'
- where curr_record = 'Y'

Active: represents the Peoplesoft program status (prog_status) for 'AC' and is independent of actual course enrollment. Since PHP students often times take courses one term and then will not enroll for one or more terms, their Peoplesoft status may revert to 'DC'. Because of this, we are looking for prog_status of 'AC' for any of the last three terms (including the current term). The result is that a dashboard may delay reporting students who truly discontinue their program by up to two terms.

Not Active: This count represents students in PeopleSoft with a program status other than "Active" or "Completed Program." This includes "Cancelled," "Discontinued," "Dismissed," and "Leave of Absence." "Discontinued" includes deceased.

Not Yet Matriculated: If there is a record in SPH.APPSTAT_VIEW but not a corresponding record in PS_DWSA_PROG_DTL, then the student falls in to the "Not yet matriculated" column and it is assumed that the student never enrolled or has yet to enroll.

Adjustments to PeopleSoft prog_status include:
* In 2010/2011, SPH took back several academic programs from the Graduate School and these records show up in this table as a 'DC' (discontinued) from the Grad School. Therefore, for these reports, we are ignoring any records where prog_reason = 'GSCV' (Grad School Conversion) and prog_status = 'DC' (discontinued).
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Program:
• Degree
• Major
A student's Program is comprised of his/her Degree and Major
• Degree: The Degree for which the student is applying (e.g., MPH, PHD, etc.)
• Major: The Major for which the student is applying (e.g., Epidemiology, Biostatistics, etc.)



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Race / EthnicityThe individual's race / ethnicity as captured in their SOPHAS application. Note that ethnicity values are only reported for US Citizens (based on citizenship_country_id = 'US') and all other values are labeled as International.

Note that as of the 2008 application cycle, prospective students can report multiple ethnicity values and therefore the sum of each ethnicity column will generally be greater than the total distinct count of students. For the ethnicity views, the ability to report multiple ethnicity values per applicant impacts the trend lines on the Race/Ethnicity graphs. The percentages are calculated based on the number of times applicants identified with the given ethnic group divided by the total number of applicants. Since more students are identifying with multiple ethnic groups, we are seeing our percentages for each group increase.

In addition, it was at that time that the U.S. Department of Education separated Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander from the previously reported Asian and Pacific Islander category.
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Recent Degreespecific to downloadable fields for Current Student Counts and Application Counts workbooks - download detailed fields

most recent degree reported by applicant in SOPHAS
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Recent Degree Date specific to downloadable fields for Current Student Counts and Application Counts workbooks - download detailed fields

MM/yyyy listed by applicant for receipt of the most recent degree listed in SOPHAS
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Recent Degree School specific to downloadable fields for Current Student Counts and Application Counts workbooks - download detailed fields

school associated with the recent degree record in SOPHAS
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ResidencyFor individuals with a citizenship country of 'US', residency is based on residency state as captured in their SOPHAS application. If residency state is null, it is based on permanent state. If permanent state is null, it is based on current state. If all values are null, then the record is ignored for the given analysis. If citizenship country is not 'US', then the individual is considered international.
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SPH IDUnique ID of the individual. This ID does not tie or link to any other identifiers. This is a raw data point that is only available to those who can view / download detailed data in Tableau.
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SPH StatusFor a given Student Plan, this is the student's corresponding status with the SPH. SPH Status options:

I. Prospective
• A Prospective is an individual whose name was purchased from a list and who hasn't yet made an inquiry or shown active interest in the school.

II. Inquiry
• An Inquiry is an individual who has shown an interest in the school. The student remains in this status until s/he has applied. "Interest" can include attending an event, filling out a form, sending an e-mail to SPH, etc. In other words, the individual is actively seeking inforrmation about SPH.

III. Applicant: When a student applies (regardless if s/he was ever a prospective), s/he becomes Applicant status.

IV. Current: After a student submits an application and that application has been approved, when this admitted student confirms his/her enrollment, s/he moves into Intent to Matriculate status (DEIN). The following are sub-status options (which come from DSWA tables in PeopleSoft to identify the student's overarching status, not "current enrollment" status):
• Active (AC)
• Leave of Absence (LA)
• Discontinued (DC)
• Completed Program (CM)
Note that there are additional sub-status options available from the UMN DW; however, the accuracy / usefulness of those values depends on whether SPH is actively using them in PeopleSoft.

V. Graduate/Alumni: This includes individuals who are alumni of a given Program (i.e., they're a graduate of a given Degree & Major). This is based off the PeopleSoft conferred term. Note that an individual could be a graduate of more than one SPH Program.
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Student IDUnique ID of the individual as assigned by the U of MN. This is a raw data point that is only available to those who can view / download detailed data in Tableau.
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Student Plan
A "student plan" is comprised of:
• SPH_ID
• Program, which is comprised of:
• Degree
• Major
• Term
As there isn't a single, discreet database field that captures the "ID" of a unique, individual application nor a student's subsequent plan once they've been accepted or enrolled, a given "student plan" is identified based on its unique combination of SPH_ID, Term, Degree, and Major values
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Term:
• Season + Year
A Term is combination of a season and year (e.g., Fall 2017, Spring 2016, etc.)