Essential Data for Admissions Advisers

1. Essential Data for Admissions Advisers August 2012 Reuben Ternes, OIRA

2. Overview • Presentation in 6 Parts • Introduction to OIRA • Part I: FTIAC Growth • Part II: Recruitment Data • Part III: The Importance of Transfer Students • Part IV: Comparing OU to National Data • Part V: Academic Success Indicators

3. What does OIRA do? • Tracks and projects enrollment • Reports to federal agencies (IPEDS) • Official record keeper for large amounts of university data • Analyzes policy decisions • (i.e. Is it a good policy to encourage students to take 16 credits their first semester, regardless of their ACT score? What will happen to our retention rates if we change our admission requirements?) • Reports graduation rates, retention rates, etc. • Gathers and reports on various student surveys. • …and much much more…

4. OIRA Website • www.oakland.edu/OIRA • Lots of potentially useful info on the website: • New student profiles • Enrollment data, current and historical • Ad hoc reports • Retention and Graduation Rate Data • NSSE Data • Assessment data and links • PowerPoint Presentations (including this one)

5. FTIAC Growth Part I

6. Historical FTIACs Numbers 1998 - 2012 ?

7. Challenges to FTIAC Growth

8. Understanding the Projections • There are two major obstacles responsible for the gap between the 2020 goal and the steady state projections • 1). High School Demographics • 2). Current Market Share

10. NCES Notes • NCES has revised their projection downward from last year’s projection. • (This means they expect even fewer students to graduate from MI high schools in the next few years)

11. 2011 OU-FTIACs by County

12. Market Share, 2011 vs. 2006

13. FTIAC Growth: good and bad news • Bad News for FTIAC Enrollment • High school graduates are down • We will need to do more with less • Over 80% of our FTIACs come from only 3 counties • Our market share in other counties is low and/or non-existent. • The Good News for FTIAC Enrollment • The decline in projected high school students is slightly less severe in Oakland and Macomb counties (at least for the next few years). • These are the counties where we have the highest market share.

14. Recruitment Data Part II

15. High Schools with Most Enrolled FTIACs

16. Yield by HS GPA • Yield: the probability that an applicant will enroll. • Many variables are correlated with yield • HS GPA • ACT scores • Plus many others. • The relationship between HS GPA and yield follows a non-obvious (and non-linear) pattern.

17. Yield by HS GPA for Fall 2010

18. Yield, continued • ACT scores follow a similar pattern • Predicting who will attend is not straightforward • Because of this, OIRA used a technique known as Random Forest to predict who might attend and who might not. • It works a lot like Netflix. • It does not work like Pandora! (Pandora has a terrible algorithm). • Takes into account over 50 different variables! • Like Application date, event registration, time between application and decision, scholarship offers, family income, HS rank and size, ACT scores, etc. etc.

19. Random Forest: What you Need to Know • Accuracy = 75% • So, it’s pretty good. • But it still gets a lot of predictions wrong. It’s not perfect! • RF is another tool in the toolbox. • It’s useful, but it won’t do our jobs for us.

20. Switching Focus: The role of the Transfer Student Part III

21. Part III: Transfer Data • New students = FTIACs + New Transfers • 2361 new FTIACs in 2011 • 1891 new transfer students in 2011 • This Year: • FTIACs up 3% • Transfers up 3% • Official count is not until the end of September, so these numbers may fluctuate. • About half of our seniors are transfers. • (Which suggests that about half of our degree recipients are too)

22. Where do our transfer students come from?

23. New Transfer Student Profile (Fall 2011) • Approximately 75% come from 2-year colleges while 25% come from 4-year institutions. • Almost 50% were 21 or younger. • About 25% are 25 or older. • 72% were full-time. • 70% had a GPA of a 2.5 or higher from their former institution. • Half had a GPA of 2.9 or higher.

24. Similarities and Differences: Comparing OU to National Data Part IV

25. Surveys • OU has two major student surveys through OIRA • CIRP (freshmen only) • NSSE (freshmen and seniors) • Results for both are available on: www.oakland.edu/OIRA • These surveys give us information about our student body • How many hours they work? • How difficult they find courses to be at OU • How much money their parents make • How often they drink • Why they choose OU • Etc… • Mostly, we find that OU is similar to other institutions. However, there are some differences.

26. Very Important Reasons to Select OU

27. The Importance of Keeping Up to Date with Politics

28. Marijuana Should Be Legalized

29. Drank Beer During High School Year

30. More than 15 Hours per Week Working Off Campus

31. “The Environment Emphasizes Spending Significant Amounts of Time on Academic Work” “Very Much” (4.0) Average NSSE Response (Freshmen) “Quite a Bit” “Some” (2.0)

32. Time Spent on Academic Work 11-15 Hours Per Week 6-10 Hours Per Week (3.0)

33. Academic Success Indicators Part V

34. Percentage of Full Time FTIACs with 1st Semester GPAs Less than 2.0

35. FT-FTIAC Retention to Second Year

36. 6-Year Graduation Rate by ACT Score

37. 6 Year Graduation Rate by HS GPA

38. First Year Retention Rate by ACT Score

39. First Year Retention by HS GPA

40. Questions • What questions do you have for me? • What questions do you have for OIRA? • What data do you use on a regular basis? • What information do you need? • What tools do you need to turn your data into information?