Enrollment (Table 1)

The total number of students enrolled at Calvin this fall is 4,332, an increase of 2 students over last fall. Although the overall enrollment was relatively steady, the Traditional Undergraduate Full Time Equivalent (FTE) grew from 4,098 to 4,124. This figure places the college's traditional undergraduate FTE enrollment slightly above the high end of our optimal enrollment range of 3,900-4,100 Traditional Undergraduate FTE as established in the college's strategic plan.

Table 1 also shows a continuation of the trend toward more religious diversity at Calvin, with a slight increase in the percentage of students from outside the Christian Reformed Church (50.9%) and a corresponding decrease in the percentage of those with Christian Reformed affiliation (49.1%). Diversity in race and nationality also increased, as the numbers and percentages of Canadian citizens, other International citizens, and AHANA students are all up from last year. The number of students from Michigan dropped slightly from 54.5% last fall to 53.2% this fall.

Table 1 shows slightly fewer Post-Bacs, Graduate students, and Dually enrolled students, but an increase in the number of traditional full-time undergraduate students. The male to female ratio is 44/56, and 37% of all students have at least one parent who is a Calvin alum.

Student Majors (Table 3)

The top four programs of study this fall, as measured by overall student enrollment in specific majors or concentrations are Elementary Education (9.2%), Business (5.9%), Secondary Education (5.7%), and Nursing (5.4%). Other top choices include English (4.3%), Psychology (4.1%), and Biology (3.7%).

The departments with the largest number of majors are Education (14.9%), Economics and Business (9.8%), Engineering (7.4%), Communication Arts & Sciences (6.5%, including Business/CAS group majors), Nursing (5.4%), Biology (4.4%), Sociology, Social Work, & Criminal Justice (4.4%), English (4.3%), and Psychology (4.1%). Nearly one-quarter (23%) of all declared majors are enrolled in one of the programs in Education.

Programs showing steady increases in majors over the past few years, including this year, are Biotechnology, Chemistry, Engineering, Foreign Languages, History, and Nursing. In addition, substantial one-year increases from 2002 to 2003 can be seen in the number of Communication Arts & Sciences, Political Science, and Sociology majors. Increases in pre-professional programs are evident this year, most notably in Pre-Medicine, Pre-Dentistry, Pre-Pharmacy, Pre-Physical Therapy, and Pre-Law.

Scholarships (Table 4)

The number of merit scholarship recipients has remained fairly steady. The percentage of FTIACs (First Time in any College) receiving a merit scholarship is 58.3% compared with last year's 59.0%. Nineteen National Merit Scholars are part of the new entering class, and almost 19% of the class, or 193 students, are recipients of the Presidential Scholarship award of $5,500. Of the 4,157 traditional under-graduates enrolled, 1,804 (43%) are receiving one of the top five merit scholarships.

Demographics (Table 5), (Table 6), (Table 7)

Calvin students come from 47 different states, 7 Canadian provinces and 43 other foreign countries. After Michigan (53.2% of all students), the top three states/provinces represented are Illinois (7.9%), Ontario (4.4%), and California (3.1%). For detailed counts of students by residence see Table 5.

The distributions of students by race/ethnicity and citizenship are shown in Table 6. The largest group of U.S. ethnic minorities enrolled at Calvin is Asian-American, at 107 students (2.5%). The total non-white U.S. population of the college is 6.1%, up from 5.4% last fall.

The 193 Canadian citizens in Table 6 represent 4.5% of our student body, up from 176, or 4.1% last fall. However, Canadian affiliations on campus are more prevalent than this number suggests, since a sizable number of students classified as U.S. citizens hold dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship (n=65), and two-thirds of these dual citizens reside in Canada. The top four non-North American countries represented by our International student citizens are South Korea (45 students), Nigeria (23 students), Ghana (19 students), and India (12 students).

Religious affiliations of students (Table 7) show Christian Reformed students comprising roughly 49% of the student body, with the second largest group of students affiliated with an Nondenominational church (10%). Other denominational families frequently represented are Reformed, Presbyterian, and Baptist, each accounting for roughly 6-7% of the student body.

Retention and Graduation Rates (Table 8)

This year's FTIAC retention rate of 86.6% is the second highest ever and represents a slight decrease from last year's highest rate ever recorded at Calvin (87.2%). The highest retention rates (based on four-year averages) continue among the following subgroups: top scholarship recipients (91%), CRC students (90%), alumni children (90%), and Christian high school graduates (88%). The high level of persistence of AHANA FTIACs from last year to this year (85%) is again welcome news.

The five-year graduation rate of the entering 1998 FTIAC class is the highest ever, at 73.6%--up one and one-half percentage points from last year's 72.0%. Graduation rates for AHANA students in this cohort jumped to 62% this year, up from 46% last year. The highest graduation rates are found among Top Scholarship recipients (80.6%), Christian high School graduates (79.6%), Alumni Children (79.5%), and Christian Reformed students (79.4%).

New Students: FTIAC and Transfer (Table 9)

Roughly 55% of students applying for first-time admission to Calvin this year chose to enroll, resulting in an incoming FTIAC class of 1,042 students.

The number of enrolled FTIACs that are Christian Reformed decreased slightly, from 51% last year to 49.5% this year. Nearly 38% of the class have at least one parent that is a Calvin alum. The percentage of the enrolling class that is conditionally admitted continues a nearly decade-long decline, dropping once again from 6.3% last year to 5.8% this year.

The percentage of the class graduating from Christian High Schools increased for the third year in a row, from 59% last year to over 61% this year. Additionally, the number and percentage of International Citizens, AHANA students and Canadian citizens increased from last year, while the proportion of the FTIAC class residing in Michigan declined rather substantially, from 52% last year to 48% this year.

Admitted to Enrolled Yields (Table 10)

The highest enrollment yields among FTIACs this year are among West Michigan Christian High School students (73%), Christian Reformed students (72%), Alumni children (72%) and Canadian citizens (73%).

The yield of AHANA students improved greatly, from 36% last year to 53% this year. Yields were uncharacteristically low for public high schools students in general, but especially for Michigan public high school students, at 41%, the lowest in the past four years. The overall yield for transfer admits, at 67%, is about average for the previous three years.

FTIAC GPAs and Test Scores (Table 11 & 12)

The academic strength of the entering first-year class increased on some measures compared with last year's class. Mean GPA stands at 3.54, slightly higher than last year's 3.53, while ACT Composite scores increased slightly from 25.4 to 25.5. For a smaller subset of students who took the SAT, scores rose the most dramatically, from an average of 1176 last year to 1199 this year. The percentage of enrolled FTIACs graduating in the top 10% of their high school class dropped slightly, from 27% to 25%.

Faculty Composition (Table 13), (Table 14)

The number of full-time teaching faculty at Calvin in 2003 is 305, up from 291 last year. An additional 77 part-time faculty this fall brings the total faculty FTE (a rough measure of the full-time teaching equivalent which adjusts for part-timers and reduced loads) to 303 this year, less than a 1% increase over last year.

The number of full-time female faculty remains at 92, but dropped as a percent of the total from 31.6% to 30.2%. The number of AHANA (ethnic minority) faculty has increased from 19 to 21. Other notables: the percentage of full-time faculty with a terminal degree increased slightly to 82.6%, and the student to faculty ratio based on teaching duties college-wide is 15.0 to 1, up slightly from last year. Table 14 gives counts of the number of full-time faculty by department.

Departmental Enrollments (Table 15) & Student:Faculty Ratios (Table 16)

The total number of registered student semester hours for fall 2003 is 60,473, a 2% increase over last year's 59,195. In the context of this overall increase in credit hours, departments showing relatively larger increases (>100 hours) from fall 2002 to this fall are Biology (up 602 hours), Chemistry and Biochemistry (up 108 hours), Education (up 104 hours), History (up 279 hours), Interdisciplinary (up 179 hours), Music (up 103 hours), Nursing (up 200 hours), and Sociology (up 252 hours).

Table 16 combines information on student credit hours with numbers of FTE faculty to compute student-faculty ratios by department. Such ratios can provide a starting point for comparison and further inquiry in helping to inform decisions about departmental needs. The departments with the lowest ratios are Nursing (7.2 students per faculty), Music (8.7 students per faculty), French (10.5 students per faculty), and Computer Science (11.5 students per faculty), while those with the highest ratios are Mathematics and Statistics (19.8), History (19.2), Psychology (18.8), and Religion (18.2).