Gradforce Glossary

Created by Josh Mentzer, Modified on Fri, Mar 28 at 9:17 AM by Josh Mentzer

Below are some key terms you'll see as you navigate Gradforce.

Alum Experience: A post high school path for an alumnus. These can include University Experiences, Military Enlistments, Trade School, and Religious Life.

University Experience: A record encompassing an alum's enrollment at a particular college or university. Even if an alum receives multiple degrees from a college or university, they will only have one alum experience.

Alum University Status: A field that summarizes an alum's overall college status. Find a full summary of different alum experience statuses here.

Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4, etc.: This short hand represents the years after an alum's high school graduation. Y1 is the year after they graduate, Y2 is the second year after they graduate, as so on.

Persistence: An alum remaining in college year over year. These are represented in the context of Y years in Gradforce. A student that attends college in Y1 and attends college again in Y2 has Y2 Persistence. An alumnus that attends college in Y2 and again in Y3 has Y3 Persistence (even if they didn't attend school in Y1).

Retention: Just like persistence, with the additional requirement that a student doesn't change colleges. If an alum is enrolled at one school in Y1 and a different school in Y2, they would have Y2 Persistence but not Y2 Retention.

First University: The alum experience for the first college or university an alum attends after high school graduation (does not necessarily need to be in Y1).

Primary University: The most significant alum experience an alumni has. Calculated by a formula that weighs the status of an experience, whether the experience is at a 2-year or 4-year institution, and the length of the experience.

Student Semester Health: A survey and data tool used to help assess a student's risk factors to college persistence, specifically financial, academic, and socioemotional risk.

Planned University: The college or university a student committed to in the spring of their senior year.

Matriculation Steps: A tool designed to help track the steps an alum needs to take to successfully enroll and begin at a college or university.

NSC: National Student Clearinghouse, the source for most data on college going students in the United States. Most Alum Experiences are built using data from NSC.