Institutional data, the administrative and transactional data collected by the university, are already collected and maintained at the individual level in application, registration, and degree databases and matched to the survey results.
Among the most important institutional variables are:
- ethnicity
- residency
- entry status (i.e., transfer or freshman entrant)
- education level (excluding exam units; used to calculate lower/upper division status and class level)
- major, department, division, and college affiliation (for declared majors)
- UC grade point average
- high school grade point average and SAT scores
- first generation college status (e.g., neither parent has 4-year college degree)
A few items already available in institutional data, such as gender, parental income, and parental education, are repeated in the survey to achieve greater completeness and detail. Additionally, the survey includes demographic questions not available in institutional data (e.g., political and religious affiliation).
For administrative uses, any institutional data that identify individual students by student ID number can be linked to the UCUES data, from a roster of an intramural soccer team to a list of students who graduated from a particular high school or community college to a list of scholarship winners.