1 a Study on Characteristics and Outcome Of

A Study on Characteristics and Outcome of Transfer Students at Purdue University West Lafayette

By Monal Patel

Office of Enrollment Management Analysis and Reporting

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to further understand the characteristics and outcomes of students who transfer from a 2 or 4 year institution to Purdue University West Lafayette. Characteristics such as demographics, previous college information, previous college GPA, number of transfer credits, entry college and residency status will be examined for the transfer student population. In addition to demographics, this study reports on the academic outcome for transfer students based on factors such as courses taken, semester and cumulative GPA earned, and retention and graduation rates. The withdrawal rate for transfer students is highlighted in this study and leaves an open question regarding the national disposition of withdrawn students on degree completion and possible accumulation of student debt.

The definition of a transfer student is one who has graduated from any high school and attended another post-secondary institution. For this study, three cohorts of transfer students are considered. The first cohort (Cohort 1) consists of students who applied to Purdue for the 2009-10 academic year. The second cohort (Cohort 2) consists of students who applied to Purdue for the 2010-11 academic year. And the third cohort (Cohort 3) consists of students who applied to Purdue for the 2011-12 academic year.

Transfer Matriculation

The number of applicants, admitted students and eventual number of students matriculated for each cohort is depicted in Table 1 through 3. The data show that the number of applicants has fluctuated throughout the years. A surge of applications occurs in Cohort 2 amounting to a 6.8% increase over the prior academic year cohort. The following academic year (Cohort 3) there is a 3.1% decrease in applicants. The fluctuations in applicants throughout the years, still amount to an overall increase of 3.9% in transfer applications. Even with the increase in applicants, the number of admits and enrolls continue to decline through the cohort years.

The percentage of admitted students who actually enroll at Purdue (yield) has been decreasing over the years. In cohort year1, 61.3% of the students admitted enrolled and registered for Purdue courses sometime after their initial admit term. A decline in yield rate occurs in Cohort 2 and increases back slightly in Cohort 3.

Term Apps Admits Selectivity Enrolled Yield Summer 2009 280 126 45.0% 79 62.7% Fall 2009 3307 1715 51.9% 1020 59.5% Spring 2010 1192 498 41.0% 297 59.6% *Enrolled Term after 37 Spring 2010 Cohort 1 Total 4779 2339 48.9% 1433 61.3% Table 1 – Admission funnel for Cohort Year1

Term Apps Admits Selectivity Enrolled Yield Summer 2010 419 162 38.7% 80 49.4% Fall 2010 3421 1570 45.9% 861 54.8% Spring 2011 1285 520 40.5% 301 57.9% *Enrolled Term after 31 Spring 2011 Cohort 2 Total 5125 2252 43.9% 1273 56.5% Table 2 – Admission funnel for Cohort Year2

Term Apps Admits Selectivity Enrolled Yield Summer 2011 397 145 36.5% 66 45.5% Fall 2011 3300 1456 44.1% 857 58.6% Spring 2012 1269 439 34.6% 255 58.1% *Enrolled Term after 32 Spring 2012 Cohort 3 Total 4966 2040 41.1% 1210 59.3% Table 3 – Admission funnel for Cohort Year3 2

*Transfer students are admitted and register for the first time later than their admission term.

The College of Liberal Arts had the largest population of admitted transfer students. Table 4 below shows the top five colleges into which transfer students were admitted at Purdue. Consistently, College of Liberal Arts is the top admitting college for transfer students across all cohort years. College of Science, College of Agriculture and Veterinary Technology have also consistently been a top admitting college for transfer students across all cohort years. College of Engineering had a large percentage of admits in Cohort 1, however in Cohort 2 (8%) and Cohort 3 (5%) dropped dramatically in admitted students.

App College % Admitted (Rank) Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Cohort 3 College of Liberal Arts 25.8% (1) 26.1% (1) 26.4% (1) College of Engineering 16.0% (2) Not in top 5 Not in top 5 College of Science 12.8% (3) 13.0% (2) 14.2% (2) College of Agriculture 9.5% (4) 10.6% (4) 11.0% (4) Veterinary Technology 8.8% (5) 10.9% (3) 10.1% (5) Krannert School of Management Not in top 5 10.0% (5) Not in top 5 College of Health & Human Sciences 12.9% (3) Table 4 – Top Colleges for Admitted Transfers

Demographics of the Transfer students

Purdue admits 38.3% Indiana resident transfer students, with 27.7% from out of state and 34% coming from countries such as China, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, and Australia. The high yield rate for Indiana resident student of almost 80% indicates that admitted transfers usually from another Indiana institution are serious about coming to Purdue.

Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Cohort 3 Admits Enrolled Yield Admits Enrolled Yield Admits Enrolled Yield Resident 895 709 79.2% 883 700 79.3% 829 655 79.0% Non- 648 304 46.9% 681 285 41.8% 629 262 41.6% Resident Foreign 796 420 52.8% 688 288 41.9% 582 293 50.3% Table 5 – Admitted and Enrolled by Residency

Enrolled Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Cohort 3 Male 705 604 577 Female 728 669 633 Total 1433 1273 1210

2 or more races 21 22 American Indian or 3 4 3 Alaska Native Asian 38 41 38 Black or African 50 42 45 American Hispanic/Latino 52 44 50 International 421 287 293 Native Hawaiian or 2 Other Pacific Islander Unknown 63 34 32 White 806 800 725 Total 1433 1273 1210

URM 105 102 113 Table 6 – Enrolled Transfer by Gender & Ethnicity

Previous Institution

A total of 2034 different prior institutions are recorded on Purdue transfer student transcripts. Overall, the largest population of transfer students comes from Indiana institutions. Most foreign previous institutions are in either China or India.

Although the number of transfer student applications coming from Ivy Tech Lafayette has decreased from academic year 2010-11 to academic year 2011-12, it still continues to be the top institution bringing in the most transfer applications. Purdue University West Lafayette is listed as a previous institution mostly due to transfer students who may have left Purdue West Lafayette and later enrolled at another institution but now are back to Purdue West Lafayette. The Unknown College line item in Table 7 is attributed to institutions without a valid CEEB code.

It is interesting to note that even though overall transfer applications have increased by 187 applications from Cohort 1 to Cohort 3, there is a pattern of decreasing applications by previous institution. As shown in Table 7, in the case for some institutions the trend line shows a significant downward trend in number of applications from Cohort 2 to Cohort 3. Only IUPUI, IU Bloomington, Ivy Tech Central and IU-South Bend have seen a slight increase in transfer applications. Most other institutions are decreasing in number of applications including Ivy Tech Lafayette which is the top enrolling transfer institution for Purdue.

Institution Cohort 1 # Cohort 2 # Cohort 3 # Trend Line Apps Apps Apps Ivy Tech Lafayette 248 265 229

Indiana Purdue Univ/Indpls 113 104 114

Unknown College 113 117 97

Indiana University Bloomington 97 82 97

Inti College-Malaysia 76 102 38

Ball State Univ Muncie-IN 75 69 62

Vincennes University-In 69 61 45

Ivy Tech Central-In 52 33 40

Indiana University South Bend 40 27 42

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 40 25 6

Indiana State Univ Terre Haute 35 37 35

Taylor's College-Malaysia 35 44 26

Manipal Acad Higher Ed-India 32 12 0

Univ of Indianapolis-IN 31 17 8

China Agricultural University 28 33 57

Univ of Southern Indiana 26 35 35

Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ-China 25 10 9

Purdue Univ West Lafayette-IN 21 18 15

DD 214-Military Service 21 27 21

Indiana University Kokomo 14 25 7

Ivy Tech Bloomington-IN 8 21 8

Table 7 – Transfer Student’s Previous Institutions (top 20 in each Cohort Year)

The average GPA of transfer students from the top 20 transfer enrolling institutions is shown in Table 8. Prior institutional GPA is a metric which often is not reported by transfer students. In Cohort 1, only 226 students reported a GPA from their prior institution. The same downward trend is seen in Cohort 2 with 121 transfer students and Cohort 3 with only 34 transfer students reporting previous intuitional GPA. The high number of unreported prior institution GPA paints an incomplete picture for assessing academic quality based on GPA for the incoming transfer student population. However with the incomplete data we do have, for Cohort 1 the overall GPA of all transfer institutions is 3.27, Cohort 2 is 3.31 and Cohort 3 is 3.44.

Institution Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Cohort 3 N GPA N GPA N GPA Ivy Tech Lafayette 27 3.15 12 3.20 2 * Indiana Purdue Univ/Indpls 10 2.74 1 * 1 * Unknown College 1 * Indiana University Bloomington 7 2.88 6 3.15 Ball State Univ Muncie-IN 4 2.84 6 3.01 Vincennes University-In 5 3.23 5 2.97 2 * Ivy Tech Central-In 6 3.54 1 * 1 * Indiana University South Bend 4 3.33 Indiana State Univ Terre Haute 5 3.12 4 3.31 Univ of Indianapolis-IN 4 2.95 1 * China Agricultural University 5 3.24 8 3.51 12 3.37 Univ of Southern Indiana 1 * 2 3.11 Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ-China 7 3.69 6 3.63 3 *

Indiana University Kokomo 1 * Ivy Tech Bloomington-IN 2 * 3 * Table 8 – Enrolled Transfer Student’s Previous Institution Average GPA

*Small cell size

Many students transferring to Purdue as an undergraduate student have already earned a degree from the transfer institution. Most students have already earned an Associate’s degree and come to Purdue to pursue a Baccalaureate degree. Students from foreign institutions tend to already have a Baccalaureate degree and enroll at Purdue for another undergraduate degree. Most applicants reported to have earned a Baccalaureate degree. In Cohort1, 5.5% of applicants reported a prior Baccalaureate degree and 3.7% had already earned an Associate degree. In Cohort 2, 5.8% reported to have earned a Baccalaureate degree and 3.2% earned an Associate degree. In Cohort 3 we see a dramatic decline in previous degrees reported, with 4.2% of applicants earned a Baccalaureate degree and 2.2% earned an Associate degree.

Institution Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Cohort 3 Ivy Tech Lafayette Assoc=18 Assoc=29 Assoc=23 Bach=1 Cert=2 Cert=2 Indiana Purdue Univ/Indpls Assoc=1 Assoc=1 Assoc=2 Bach=4 Bach=3 Bach=4 Cert=1 Masters=1 PhD=1 Unknown College Bach=8 Bach=8 Bach=5 Cert=2 Indiana University Bloomington Assoc=0 Bach=9 Bach=10 Bach=7 Masters=1 Masters=1 Masters=1 Inti College-Malaysia Cert=1 Ball State Univ Muncie-IN Assoc=1 Bach=5 Bach=7 Bach=5 Masters=1 Vincennes University-In Assoc=11 Assoc=11 Assoc=10 Cert=1 Ivy Tech Central-In Assoc=4 Assoc=1 Assoc=1 Cert=1 Indiana University South Bend Assoc=1 Bach=3 Bach=2 Cert=1 Indiana State Univ Terre Haute Bach=3 Bach=2 Taylor's College-Malaysia Bach=3 Bach=2 Manipal Acad Higher Ed-India Bach=1 Univ of Indianapolis-IN Assoc=1 Bach=1 7

Bach=2 China Agricultural University Bach=9 Bach=15 Bach=14 Univ of Southern Indiana Bach=1 Bach=1 Bach=2 Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ-China Bach=12 Bach=7 Purdue Univ West Lafayette-IN Bach=9 Assoc=2 Bach=5 Masters=1 Bach=4 Indiana University Kokomo Assoc=2 Assoc=2 Bach=1 Ivy Tech Bloomington-IN Assoc=2 Table 9 – Enrolled Transfer Student’s Previous Institution Degree

Transfer Credits

On average, students transferring to Purdue West Lafayette brought in between 46 and 47 credits from prior institutions. Students from foreign institutions bring in more than twice the number of credits than students from domestic institutions.

The foreign institutions have a greater number average transfer credits ranging from 47 to 90 credits, as highlighted in Table 11. Student’s transferring to Purdue from a prior domestic institution are bringing in on average 25-30 credits. Twenty-five to thirty credits are about one year’s worth of undergraduate credits, which coincides with the national finding of transfer mobility occurring during the second year of enrollment (NSC 2012 Signature Report, Transfer & Mobility).

# Enrolled # Enrolled % bringing in Total Credits Average Transfers Transfers with credit Credit credit Cohort 1 1433 1251 87.3% 58,903.13 47.01 Cohort 2 1273 1240 97.3% 57199.32 46.13 Cohort 3 1210 1184 97.7% 54,212.26 45.79 Table 10 – Enrolled Transfer Student’s average transfer credit

Institution Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Cohort 3 N Avg Credit N Avg Credit N Avg Credit Ivy Tech Lafayette 221 22.94 239 25.29 212 26.81 Indiana Purdue Univ/Indpls 76 23.14 73 24.67 71 29.63 Indiana University Bloomington 67 28.25 54 32.79 63 26.93 Ball State Univ Muncie-IN 62 35.83 52 33.88 47 29.13 Vincennes University-In 58 41.64 48 50.23 37 33.70 Inti College-Malaysia 39 47.79 18 39.39 25 45.80 Ivy Tech Central-In 36 16.97 25 22.32 31 24.64 Indiana State Univ Terre Haute 29 30.62 29 34.55 30 28.50 Indiana University South Bend 29 19.93 21 18.48 31 25.52 Univ of Indianapolis-IN 23 28.15 15 36.23 7 26.86 Taylor's College-Malaysia 21 47.57 23 49.91 15 48.60 DD 214-Military Service 20 7.80 25 8.00 16 7.25 China Agricultural University 18 90.03 21 78.93 39 75.28 Univ of Southern Indiana 15 33.27 26 34.81 30 35.27 Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ-China 14 89.25 9 63.17 8 94.19 Indiana University Kokomo 9 17.44 16 26.25 6 26.83 Ivy Tech Bloomington-IN 5 27.40 14 32.64 4 17.00 Table 11 – Enrolled Transfer Student’s average transfer credit by institution

Not all transfer credits are accepted by Purdue for degree requirement and some credit also cannot be mapped to an equivalent Purdue course. In these cases, the credit is undistributed credit which is either assigned to particular subject field and a course level or just completely assigned as undistributed when no reasonable Purdue course equivalency can be determined. A majority of students have at least one transfer course which did not get mapped to a Purdue equivalent course. As shown in Table 12, in Cohort 1 80.3% of students had at least one undistributed course. By Cohort 3, the percentage rises to 89.2% of students with an undistributed transfer course. These undistributed credits are most often for courses in subject fields MA, ENGL, MGMT, BIOL, HIST, CS, CHM, COM, PHYS, POL, SOC, PSY and SPAN. The number of enrolled transfers with undistributed credit in some of these subjects is outlined in Table 13.

# Enrolled % of Enrolled Average Transfers with Transfers with Undistributed undistributed undistributed credit Credit credit Cohort 1 1151 80.3% 29.06 Cohort 2 1142 89.7% 27.52 Cohort 3 1079 89.2% 28.20 Table 12 – Enrolled Transfer Student’s Undistributed Credit

#Enrolled Transfers affected by undistributed credit MA ENGL HIST BIOL MGMT CS CHM COM Cohort 1 558 509 376 322 295 286 264 280 Cohort 2 531 578 340 315 309 258 264 275 Cohort 3 527 500 313 282 311 262 257 240 Table 13 – Enrolled Transfer Student by Undistributed Subject

First Year GPA

The transfer students in each of the Cohort academic terms, seem to have a relatively similar cumulative GPA at the end of the subsequent Fall term. For example, Cohort 1 students have a 2.88 cumulative GPA at the end of Fall 2010 term. Respectively, Cohort 2 and Cohort 3 first year GPA are 2.81 and 2.85.

The average first year GPA for all new beginning students starting Purdue West Lafayette in the Fall of 2012, was 3.01. Comparatively, transfer student first year GPA is .16 points lower than the traditional new beginning students’ first year GPA.

Retention and Graduation

Degree completion is considered to be a key college success outcome. The transfer student national degree completion rate is 54% for 6 year completion (NSC Signature Report, Completing College: A State-Level View of Student Attainment Rates). Nationally, 12% of students start at a four-year public institution and complete at an institution other than their starting institution.

Retention and graduation rates are measured for a group of students entering the institution in a specific academic term. Traditional first-time full-time students usually are admitted for a Fall academic term and enroll for the same Fall academic term. Transfer student behavior is not as straightforward. The transfer Cohort consists of students admitted for a set of terms and then most likely do not enroll in their admitted term. A mixed bag of admitted terms combined with a mixed bag of first-time entry terms makes it difficult to calculate retention and graduation rates for the entire Cohort. To reduce the impact of varying first-time entry terms, the Cohorts are separated into two subsets. The first subset is defined as students admitted in a Summer or Fall term. Generally students admitted in a Summer or Fall term subsequently enroll in the same Fall term, thus being more consistent with traditional new beginners. Transfer students admitted in a Spring term are separated out because of similar first-time entry term behavior.

As shown in Table 14, Purdue is retaining transfer students at around 80%. Since transfer students bring in an average of 45 credits, they do tend to start graduating during their second year at the institution.

Admit Term 1st year 2nd year 3rd year Retention Retention Graduation Retention Graduation Summer & Fall 2009 74.6% 58% 10% 27.9% 37.3% Summer & Fall 2010 80.5% 64% 10.9% Summer & Fall 2011 81.1%

Spring 2010 80.3% 65.9% 5.5% 37.9% 31.1% Spring 2011 76.8% 63.9% 6.3% Spring 2012 74.1% Table 14 – Transfer Retention and Graduation Rates

Transfer students who are not still enrolled or do not graduate from Purdue West Lafayette are subdivided into either academically dismissed or voluntarily withdrawn from the university. At Purdue West Lafayette the withdrawal rates increase over time with the peak at 35% of all transfer students leaving the institution. Transfer students more often voluntarily withdraw from the university. As shown in Table 15, the voluntarily withdraw rates (designated 12 by V=) are much higher than students leaving the university because of being academically dropped (designated by D=). Comparing the transfer student withdrawal rates to the overall university voluntarily withdraw rate (Table 16), indicates that the transfer student is voluntarily withdrawing at a much higher rate than compared to the traditional first-time full-time entry cohort.

Admit Term 1st year 2nd year 3rd year Dropped/Withdrew Dropped/Withdrew Dropped/Withdrew Summer & Fall 2009 25.3% (D=3.2%, V=22.1%) 32% (D=5.6%, V=26.4%) 34.8% (6.5%, V=28.4%) Summer & Fall 2010 19.5% (D=5.6%, V=13.8%) 25.1% (8%, V=17.2%) Summer & Fall 2011 18.9% (D=4.2%, V=14.7%)

Spring 2010 19.3% (D=2%, V=17.4%) 28.6% (D=2.3%, V=26.3%) 31.1% (D=3.6%, V=27.5%) Spring 2011 23.2% (D=3.2%, V=20%) 30% (4.8%, V=25.2%) Spring 2012 25.9% (D=.74%, V=25.2%) Table 15 – Transfer Withdrawal Rate

Entry Term for first- 1st year 2nd year 3 year time full-time cohort Voluntarily Withdraw Voluntarily Withdraw Voluntarily Withdraw Fall 2009 8.5% 12.8% 13.8% Fall 2010 7.3% 11.5% 12.9% Fall 2011 7.1% 11% Table 16 – Overall University Withdrawal Rate

Conclusion

At Purdue West Lafayette the fall term incoming class mostly consists of first-time full-time degree seeking students who are straight out of high school. We conduct many studies on this population. We distribute many reports pertaining to pre-entry characteristics and related predictors of college success. However there is now this other growing population of students, the transfer student. The transfer applications are slightly increasing, however the enrolls are decreasing. What is the reason for the decrease, especially in our highest transfer institution namely Ivy Tech-Lafayette?

Transfer students, unlike the first-time full-time population, are more invested in their prior coursework. What is the impact to a transfer student’s time to degree because of the undistributed credit?

College success as measured by retention and graduation rates is different for transfer students than the first-time full-time cohort. The transfer student is a mobile student, where they can attend multiple institutions before earning a degree. Therefore, the withdrawal rates are much higher. However, keeping in mind the mobility nature of the transfer population, we need to study further the final disposition of withdrawn students. Are they attending yet another post- secondary institution?

This study was designed to explore and define characteristics surrounding the Purdue transfer student. Data exploration studies often bring up the need for further studies to provide direction for improving the transfer student experience at Purdue.