| Student Fact Book
Definitions |
| |
| Headcount Enrollment - A count
of the number of students enrolled in a given semester. Part-time students are
counted in the same way as full-time students. |
| Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Enrollment - A
way of counting enrollment where each full-time student is counted as one and
each part-time student is counted as a portion of one. This allows all students
to be weighted in the same way given that a part-time student takes fewer
credits. |
| First-Time Freshmen -
Students who are attending college for the first time as full-time
degree-seeking freshmen. Fall counts also include those students who started in
the preceding summer and continued as full-time students. |
| Minority Enrollment - Counts of
students who indicated that their ethnicity was not white. International
students are not included in these numbers. |
| Degrees Awarded - The number of
degrees distributed to completers. Since students can earn more than one degree
at a time, this is more than a count of graduates. |
| Graduation Rate - The percent
of a given cohort that graduated within a specified amount of time. A cohort is
defined as the first-time, full-time, degree-seeking freshmen that enter in a
given fall. The number of students who graduate before the fall semester four,
five and six years later are counted and divided by the cohort size to
determine the graduation rate for each of those years. The rates are
cumulative, so students who graduated within four years are also included in
the five-year rate. |
| Retention Rate - The percent of
a given cohort that remains enrolled at Penn State. A cohort is defined as the
first-time, full-time, degree-seeking freshmen that enter in a given fall. The
number of those students who are still enrolled in subsequent fall semesters
are counted and divided by the cohort size to determine the retention rate for
each year. |
| Student Credit Hours (SCH) - The
number of credits taken by students in the stated academic year (Summer, Fall
and Spring). Breakdowns are based on where the credit hours are offered, not by
who takes them. So all courses in The College of Liberal Arts are shown there,
even though they are taken by students from many different colleges. |
