Date

04 Apr 2019

Attendees

• Janet Boucouvalas -SPC

• Jon Barker - USM Institutional Research, Analysis & Applications

• Michael Kelly- US IT Campus Solutions/ Target X

• Ariel Cassista - UMA Admissions / Target X

• Jami Holmes - UMF Admissions / Target X

• Michael Cooley - UM Enrollment Management
• Bob Zuercher - System IR

• Justin Young - System IR

• Rachel Groenhout - DARTS
• Pavan Narayanan - DARTS
  
  

Goals

• Gather suggestions for additional guidelines for determining last school type
• Brainstorm additional quality checking mechanisms to ensure that LAST_SCH_ATTEND is populated and accurate
• Determine need for EXT_ORG_ID fields; what is the usage profile and what are the alternatives others use (if they do)?

Discussion items

Current Calculation:

EXT_ORG_ID and UM_EXT_ORGID_DESCR are based on LAST_SCH_ATTEND field. If LAST_SCH_ATTEND is not supplied, then UM_EXT_ORG_ID1 and UM_EXT_ORGID_DSCR1 are used from PS_EXT_ACAD_DATA and PS_EXT_ORG_PRI_VW where the TO_DT is the most current date. If there is no single record with a most current TO_DT, then random record is used.

List of fields:

Each numbered field has a unique EXT_ORG_ID record up to the maximum of 10. There are 180 fields in total affected in PS_UM_APPL_EXTRACT.

Considerations:

• Last School Attended Procedure from Janet:

The last school attended (LSA) comes from what the applicant puts on their application and is entered at the SPC. Rules are if they are a first-year applicant then the last school attended is the high school. If a transfer, then it is a college. Sometimes campuses change the admit type when more information comes in and forget to update the LSA.

• UMaine Grad School does not enter this information at time of application in the same way as the SPC does;  from Deb:

We input the undergraduate institution in MaineStreet (Campus Solutions > Enterprise Applications > Student Admissions > Application Entry > Academic Information > Education) along with the degree they received if included on their application, and only for institutions in the US and Canada.   Old strategy (prior to 2014 I believe)

We used to enter the last institution attended within the Maintain Applications screen (Campus Solutions > Student Admissions > Application Maintenance > Maintain Applications > Application School/Recruiting tab > Last School Attended field)

• Deferred Students

if student accepted and deferred and went somewhere in the mean time to take credits and come back, then that may not be captured 

• How do Last School Attended and External Orgs 1-10 relate to each other?

The additional fields tied to LAST_SCH_ATTEND are UM_LAST_SCH_DESCR and UM_LAST_SCH_TYPE.
If LAST_SCH_ATTEND exists, UM_EXT_ORGID_DESCR and EXT_ORG_ID are the same as LAST_SCH_ATTEND.  These fields don't have all 18 present.
If LAST_SCH_ATTEND does NOT exist, data in these fields are based on the most ETA_TO_DT from PS_EXT_ACAD_DATA table. (The ETA_TO_DT fields can be all blank or have the same dates, so the data can be pulled randomly.)

If LAST_SCH_ATTEND is filled in and valid, we already have the 18 fields under UM_EXT_ORG_ID1. 

We probably need to ask people:
1. If LAST_SCH_ATTEND is not filled in or not valid, do we keep the fields for UM_EXT_ORG_ID1 as blanks? We have 299 blank LAST_SCH_ATTEND records for application_date > = 1/1/2010 and ACAD_CAREER= UGRD,  and 22220 records for GRAD. We cannot tell whether the data in LAST_SCH_ATTEND is valid or not.
2. Do we need to keep all 18 fields?
3. Why do we need to keep UM_EXT_ORGID_DESCR and EXT_ORG_ID?

Usage Notes:

• Janet, when using the app extract, is looking for particular school types, so she joins the ext org table instead of using the ext org fields in the app extract
• The Admissions group has assumed that the external org info in the applicant extract is as-of time of application; this is the only way that the information would be useful to them in an applicant extract.
• There is a general consensus that this group is not using the external org fields, and all 180 could be removed from the extract without disruption. A middle of the road solution would be to keep one set of External Org Fields (1) that references the Last School Attended (if populated; if LSA is blank, then all 18 external org fields should also be blank). This would allow end users to gather more information about the LSA without joining another table, but would still result in considerable reduction of fields in the applicant extract.

Items to Follow Up on:

• Jeff & Miki: confirm that LSA is tied to application (not current/most recent LSA entered in PeopleSoft)
  • Yes, LSA in ps_adm_appl_data is tied to each application number. We are not sure how LSA is entered. (We will follow up with Janet.)
• Jami will check into sourcing for Target X extract(s); is anything coming from the applicant extract?
• Jeff & Miki: Check on ext_org_id: it 'moves' (is it not tied to application number?) Jon mentioned that this was independent; coming from ext_academic_data with emplid as primary key
  • EXT_ORG_ID in ps_ext_acad_data is NOT tied to application number. It list all EXT_ORG_IDs for the applicant.
• How might we use prospect info from TargetX; LSA in prospect doesn't always match LSA in application. Using prospect info could prove useful, for Early College and other populations as well.
• Rachel will look at usage of the external org fields in the extract. Is there any usage? Should we consider keeping ext org 1 (18 fields) and removing ext orgs 2-10?

• • There is minimal usage of any of the external org fields, but there is some usage (AppExtractUsage_ExtOrgCounts)

• DARTS will ask power users if we should keep the existing fields names from EXT_ORG_ID1. If so, what do we do for the duplicated fields (EXT_ORG_ID, UM_EXT_ORGID_DESCR, UM_EXT_ORG_ID1, UM_EXT_ORGID_DSCR1 & UM_LS_SCHOOL_TYP1). If not, what should we name them?

• • pros for keeping the same name: Existing queries that only use EXT_ORG_ID1 fields will not break.
  • cons for keeping the same name: Clarify the difference between current logic and updated logic.