View VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Card of view VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Name

VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Comment

Nasty little view that tries its best to guess at whether a given student is a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior, based on the entering and graduating cohort years and aid year.

The grain of this table is one individual per financial aid year. The values here will be the latest ones for a given aid year, to try to eliminate some of the volatility (on which, see below), and to make the values here work something like a type-I SCD.

For freshmen, this view also attempts to determine whether the freshman is (in SFS's terminology) a "true freshman," i.e., someone who hasn't previously matriculated, and just didn't get enough credits to be considered a sophomore (in IPEDS terms, this is someone who is returning with first-year status).

The values here become increasingly unreliable before 2009. And even when the values are reliable, the fact is that the cohort years are only recalculated in Colleague at the end of the term, and may fluctuate throughout a given academic year.

Because of the unreliability of the data and its volatility, it has been sequestered in a view, rather than built into MD_FinancialAidPerson or MD_DegreeStudent. This view is designed to be used by Student Financial Services, which has reports that use the concept of true freshman, returning freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. In fact, our Registrar's Office uses a wholly different, term-based framing of class levels. The values offered here are more like the ones IPEDS uses, except that in the case of IPEDS, we care about history (implying a type-II SCD), because we are typically reporting as of a particular census date, and we are not (as with Student Financial Services) looking only at the most recent data for a particularl student in a given aid year.

Dimensional Type

Dimension


SQL query of the view VMD_StuClassYearLevel

/*
* Offers a class level (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior) for aid applicants.
* Also, tells us if a freshman is (in SFS's terminology) a 'true freshman,' i.e.,
* someone who has not yet matriculated (i.e., an IPEDS 'returning with first-year
* status' student).
*
* Does this at the grain of one student per aid year (instance).
*/
select
   mdp.MD_ColPers_ColleagueID,
mdp.MD_FAidPers_InstanceName,
   CASE
      -- If we have no graduating cohort year on this person, their class year level is necessarily 'Unknown'
      WHEN mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear IS NULL                           THEN 'Unknown'
      -- Unknown graduating cohort years are recorded in the DW as 9999, so we really shouldn't see the NULL above
      WHEN mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear = 9999                              THEN 'Unknown'
      WHEN (mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear - mdp.MD_FAidPers_InstanceName) <= 0      THEN 'Post-Graduation'
      ELSE
         CASE mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear - mdp.MD_FAidPers_InstanceName
            WHEN 1 THEN 'Senior'
            WHEN 2 THEN 'Junior'
            WHEN 3 THEN 'Sophomore'
            ELSE 'Freshman' -- Kids w/ unknown graduating cohort years end up here, too
         END
   END AS VMD_ClassYLevel_StudentYear,
   -- If student was a freshman this aid year, was he or she a *true* freshman?
   CASE
      WHEN mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear IS NULL                           THEN 'Unknown'
      -- Unknown graduating cohort years are recorded in the DW as 9999, so we really shouldn't see the NULL above
      WHEN mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear = 9999                              THEN 'Unknown'
      WHEN (mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear - mdp.MD_FAidPers_InstanceName) < 4      THEN 'Not Applicable'
      -- If we have partial info on a student, he/she was probably a freshman w/ an incomplete app
      WHEN mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_EnteringCohortYear IS NULL                              THEN 'Unknown'
      WHEN mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_EnteringCohortYear = 9999                              THEN 'Probably'
      ELSE
         CASE
            -- If aid year (instance) = the entering year, then yes, we have a true freshman
            WHEN mdp.VMD_ClassYearLevel_EnteringCohortYear >= mdp.MD_FAidPers_InstanceName      THEN 'Yes'
            -- ELSE: If aid year (instance) comes after entering year, then we do NOT have a true freshman
            ELSE 'No'
         END
   END AS VMD_ClassYLevel_IsTrueFreshman
FROM
   (SELECT
      mdf.MD_COLPERS_COLLEAGUEID,
      mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_INSTANCENAME,
      ROW_NUMBER() OVER (Partition by mdf.MD_COLPERS_COLLEAGUEID, mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_INSTANCENAME Order by mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_ROWSTART DESC) AS RowNumber,
      ISNULL(mdd.MD_DSTU_ENTERINGCOHORTYEAR, ISNULL(mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_ENTERINGCOHORTYEAR, mdr.MD_PROSP_PROJECTEDENTRYTERMYEAR)) AS VMD_ClassYearLevel_EnteringCohortYear,
      ISNULL(mdd.MD_DSTU_GRADUATINGCOHORTYEAR, mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_GRADUATINGCOHORTYEAR) AS VMD_ClassYearLevel_GraduatingCohortYear
    FROM
      MD_FINANCIALAIDPERSON mdf
      LEFT OUTER JOIN MD_DEGREESTUDENT mdd
      ON mdf.MD_COLPERS_COLLEAGUEID = mdd.MD_COLPERS_COLLEAGUEID
         AND CAST(mdd.MD_COLPERS_COLLEAGUEID AS INT) <> 0
         AND mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_ROWEND >= mdd.MD_DSTU_ROWSTART
         AND mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_ROWEND <= mdd.MD_DSTU_ROWEND
      LEFT OUTER JOIN MD_PROSPECT mdr
      ON mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_RECRUITMENTPLUSPKID = mdr.MD_PROSP_SURROGATEKEY
         AND CAST(mdr.MD_PROSP_RECRUITMENTPLUSPKID AS INT) <> 0
         AND mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_ROWEND >= mdr.MD_PROSP_ROWSTART
         AND mdf.MD_FAIDPERS_ROWEND <= mdr.MD_PROSP_ROWEND
   ) mdp
WHERE
   mdp.RowNumber = 1 OR mdp.RowNumber IS NULL


List of incoming view references of the view VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Name

Child Table/View

ViewReference_154

VMF_AwardAmountSnapshot


List of referenced objects of the view VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Name

MD_DegreeStudent

MD_Prospect


List of diagrams containing the view VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Name

ViewsFinancialAidDiagram


List of permissions of the view VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Grant

User

SELECT,VIEW DEFINITION

FinancialAidReader


List of view columns of the view VMD_StuClassYearLevel

Name

Data Type

Comment

Length

MD_COLPERS_COLLEAGUEID

 

 

 

MD_FAIDPERS_INSTANCENAME

 

 

 

VMD_CLASSYLEVEL_STUDENTYEAR

 

Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, or Senior (and also, Unknown, and Post-Graduation, although typically the latter reflects bad data in the underlying systems, since we typically don't give aid at Carleton to people after they graduate, although such aid may well be offered initially, e.g., in the case of early/accelerated graduation).

 

VMD_CLASSYLEVEL_ISTRUEFRESHMAN

 

'Yes' if a student is a freshman and also has not previously matriculated. Students who matriculate, but don't earn enough credits in their first year to be considered sophomores will be labeled with a 'No' here. Upperclassmen get 'Not Applicable.' If there is not enough data in the underlying system (financial aid and student files in Colleague) to make any determination here, the value 'Unknown' will be applied, unless the problem is just that the entering cohort year is missing, in which case the value here will be 'Probably,' since the student in question probably is someone whose application was not completed/is not yet complete, and as such is a potential incoming freshman for the aid year in question.