The following definitions are in use by Northwest State Community College:
 
New Students - the first term a student attends NSCC, they are coded as
new.  If a student is new in the summer, they remain a new student for
the fall term.  Transfers are considered new, however they are coded as
transfers and counts can easily be obtained of all new, or new without
transfers.
 
Our other two categories (in addition to new) are returning and former.
A returning student is one who was in attendance the previous term.  An
exception is that 'sitting out' the summer term does not count.  In other
words a student here in the spring, and back in the fall is still a
returning student.  A former student is one who has been a student in the
past, but was not here the past 'full term' (fall or spring).
 
All students are classified as degree, certificate, non-degree, early
admit, or S.B. 140.  The post-secondary students can also be extracted by
checking a combination of the year graduated field and the final
transcript received field.  Once they have graduated from H.S., their
code would change to degree, certificate or non-degree.  We could still
determine if they started under post-secondary by checking past term's
14-day files or by comparing their early terms in the transcript file to
their H.S. graduation date.
 
I have found different entities have varying definitions for
non-traditional students.  We store a variety of codes and normally are
able to extract student based on the requesting organization's definition.
 
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Terry L. King; Dir of Info Sys      INTERNET: [log in to unmask]   |
|                & Inst Research                                         |
| Northwest State Community College      Phone: (419) 267-5511 Ext-251   |
| 22600 State Route 34                     FAX: (419) 267-3688           |
| Archbold, Ohio  43502                                                  |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+