High School Students Who Delay Entry to Oakton
Until Spring After High School
Three hundred and three (303) students from the high school class
of 2002 delayed entry to Oakton until Spring 2003. Specifically, we looked at students from the high school class of
2002 who attended Oakton in the Spring 2003 semester, but were not at the
College in Fall 2002, and whose first term at Oakton was either Summer 2002 or
Spring 2003. A student from the class
of 2002 who first attended Oakton prior
to Summer 2002 would not be included, nor would any class of 2002 student who
attended Oakton in Fall 2002.
All but four of these students first came to Oakton in the Spring
2003 semester (the others first came to Oakton in Summer 2002). They came from 65 different high
schools. Only 59 percent came from
in-district public high schools, and another 10 percent came from foreign
schools. Forty six percent were
female. Students identified their
ethnicity as white non-Hispanic (49%), Asian (12%), Hispanic (10%), Black (5%),
and other or no response (24%). Of the
303 students, 244 had taken college credit courses that applied to their
transcripts. The mean number of credits
completed was 8.35, with a standard deviation of 4.5.[1] The mean GPA was 2.02, with a standard
deviation of 1.2.
To determine whether students attended another college or university prior to coming to Oakton, we submitted names and birthdates of the 303 students to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) EnrollmentSearch program to obtain information about where the students were enrolled prior to Spring 2003.[2] The NSC found records for 301 of the 303 students. One hundred and four (35% of the 301 students found on the NSC records) did enroll at another college or university before Oakton; two of the students actually registered at two different institutions before Oakton. Schools with the most students were the University of Illinois at Chicago (12), Harper College (11), Northeastern Illinois University (7), University of Iowa (6), Loyola University (5), and Northern Illinois University (4).
What don’t we
know? These data do not tell us whether
the delayed-entry high school graduates went to another college or university
in the fall semester prior to coming to Oakton that is not included in the
National Student Clearinghouse records.
They do not tell us if students were concurrently enrolled at Oakton and
another institution in the spring semester.
They do not tell us why students left their other schools or delayed
entry to college, or why they chose Oakton.
We are planning to conduct a brief survey of these students to learn
more about these questions. For a more
details, contact the Office of Research at 847-635-1894.