MEMORANDUM

 

Date:

June 5, 2020

 

 

To:

Graduate Faculty, Graduate Coordinators and Graduate Staff

 

 

From:

Henry Frierson

 

 

RE:

Online PhD Profiles

 

 

The online Ph.D. Program Profiles have been updated and are now available for viewing. The Profiles contain information about admissions, enrollment, student demographics, completion rates and time-to-degree, as well as post-graduation data including job placement and Ph.D. student indebtedness.

 

Since 2014 we have provided the PhD Profiles for department, prospective student and public viewing by a series of PDFs. We have received and posted feedback from some departments to clarify how their PhD program is described.

 

The PhD Profiles have transitioned from static PDFs to data display using Tableau, an interactive data visualization software that allows users much more flexibility in viewing the information.

 

All data are pulled directly from UF databases, for the most part reflecting the most current and accurate information, as provided by the Colleges and Programs. The following items describe and define key elements in the five main PhD Profile Pages, including data sources and the calculations used to generate the new PhD profiles:

 

ADMISSIONS: All admissions data are queried from Office of Admissions database tables. Average undergraduate GPA and Average GRE scores represent only those students who matriculated to a PhD program as new students, not UF Master students who move to the PhD program.

 

ENROLLMENT: All of the enrollment data are queried from database tables from the Office of the Registrar.

 

COMPLETION: All data used to calculate completion, attrition, and time to degree are queried from the Graduate School (GIMS) database tables. We calculate PhD completion and attrition rates for the online PhD Profiles with the following rules:

  1. Students are placed in Cohorts based on the original start date of their PhD program. A Cohort is defined as a group of students who start within a range of semesters defined as an academic year. For instance, Cohort 2009 includes all PhD students who started their PhD programs in summer 2008, fall 2008, or spring 2009 semesters.
  2. Students are counted one time only.
  3. If a student ultimately graduated with a PhD in a major different from one in which they started, all previously dropped or inactive PhD records are removed and are not counted toward attrition calculations. Therefore, percent completion is not underestimated and attrition is not over-estimated.    
  4. If a student’s degree segment was entered in error as confirmed by departmental staff (i.e. the student never started a PhD program in that department) it was removed from the cohort.
  5. Double majors are counted as two students.

 

ENROLLMENT BY COUNTRY: Country of origin data are queried from database tables in the Registrar’s office.

 

POST-GRADUATION: The Graduate School collects and maintains job placement data for graduated PhD students from all departments. Domestic PhD student debt data are obtained by querying the university’s data warehouse through Enterprise Reporting Services.

 

The profiles are made available to the general public through The Graduate School’s website.

 

Please visit the PhD profiles at   http://graduateschool.ufl.edu/prospective-students/phd-program-profiles/

 

Please e-mail any comments, concerns or questions to [log in to unmask]

 

 

Thank you!