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Definitions of terms used in enrollment snapshots

Census is the official counting date, at the end of the third week of classes.

The enrollment snapshots cover ONLY students with state-reportable hours. The snapshot counts exclude students who are enrolled in CU-Boulder study abroad programs (around 250 per term), faculty and staff enrolled through through the faculty-staff tuition waiver program (around 100 per term), students taking English as a second language only (less than 5), and students enrolled only through continuing education or extended studies (around 1700 -- includes Boulder evening and correspondence).

Students in the ACCESS program are not seeking degrees and have not been admitted to degree programs. They have last priority in enrollment. Most ACCESS students do have state-reportable hours. They are included in the snapshot counts, and are listed as "non-degree." Enrollments of about 150 ACCESS students, primarily non-residents, are not counted as state-reportable hours (for tedious technical reasons); these students are not reported here.

Within students with reportable hours, we make the following categorizations:

Degree-seeking students are pursuing Boulder campus bachelor’s, master’s, law, or doctoral degrees, or teacher licensure. There are two groups of non-degree students. Some are Boulder campus students not pursuing a formal degree or award; most of these are enrolled through the ACCESS program administered by Continuing Education. The other group is students from CU-Denver, CU-Health Sciences, and CU-Colorado Springs, enrolling concurrently in home-campus and Boulder campus courses.

Level: Undergraduate includes students seeking bachelor’s degrees (including second bachelor’s in some cases), non-degree students without bachelor’s degrees, and teacher licensure students. All graduate level students have bachelor’s degrees already. Most are pursuing master’s, doctoral, and law degrees; some are non-degree students with bachelor’s degrees.

Residency: Same as status for tuition. Residents are charged in-state tuition rates; non-residents are charged rates for out of state students.

New freshmen are students entering an undergraduate degree program for the first time. They may have taken college courses while in high school, or in the summer after high school graduation. They may also have earned college credit through Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs. Some new freshmen have enough credit at entry to have sophomore or junior class standing (but they are still called new freshmen).

Transfers are bachelor’s degree students, newly admitted to a CU-Boulder degree program, who have earned college credit some time after the summer after their high school graduation. This credit may have been earned at a community college, at another university, or as a non-degree student enrolled through CU-Boulder’s continuing education program.

New graduate-level students are entering a master's, doctoral, or law degree program for the first time.

Roster college is the school or college responsible for the student’s primary program. (In the enrollment snapshots, we do not count enrollment in a second college separately.) Note that all degree-seeking graduate-level students have the Graduate School as their roster college except those in MBA programs (Graduate Business roster college) and in law (Law School).

Discipline college is the same as roster college for undergraduates and law students. Graduate school and MBA students are classified, based on their major, in the corresponding undergraduate college. For example, philosophy students are counted in Arts and Sciences, chemical engineering students in Engineering.

Diversity

• Gender is self-reported at time of application for admission
• Race/ethnicity is also self-reported at time of application. Our tables combine documented and undocumented American Indian categories. The categories listed are the standard federal reporting categories. These may be expanded in the coming years.
• Unknown race/ethnicity combines students who simply did not complete the race/ethnicity question on the application with those who indicated that they did not wish to answer.
• International students are those who are NOT US citizens or permanent residents. A few such international students (up to 100 in a term) have Colorado resident status for tuition purposes; usually these are students who accompanied their parents or spouses to the US, with the parents or spouses coming to the US to work (e.g., at HP). Through fall 2001, these international-but-Colorado-resident-for-tuition students were reported as "unknown" ethnicity, not as "international," per CCHE. Starting in fall 2002 we are allowed, and have, reported them as international. In the fall 2002 to fall 2001 snapshots we reclassified the fall 01 cases to "international." Therefore any changes in international numbers between fall 01 and 02 shown in the snapshots are real, not due to the bookkeeping change.
• US students of color combines Asian American, American Indian, Black/African American, and Hispanic/Latino.
• Domestic (U.S.) students excludes international.

Full time status in this report is defined as undergraduates with 12 or more credit hours, graduate-level students with any thesis or dissertation hours (grad status B or E), doctoral candidates (grad status D) with 7 or more hours, and other graduate-level students with 5 or more hours. Note that this definition is for this report and does not match the definitions on SIS, Financial Aid or IPEDS reporting.

Enrollments of students with no state-reportable hours are not reported in the snapshots at all. They have never been counted in fall enrollment reports. Final counts of these students are not available until after the end of the term. All are reported to IPEDS, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System of the U.S. Department of Eduction. For a look at our prior-year IPEDS enrollment see the CU-Boulder Common Data Set site; once there pick "B. Enrollment & persistence."

Through fall 1998, students in the program now called ACCESS generated no reportable hours and were not included in fall enrollment counts. The program was called SAVE at that time.

Last revision 11/02/04