General Requirements have 15 different filters, each with multiple criteria that can define their auto apply eligibility, and depending on your institution's data these filters can result in tens of thousands of possible combination options - or more! How do you decide the best way to create your eligibility criteria?
This article details:
How the General Requirement Matching Algorithm Does Its Matching
There are two "buckets" of data from which General Requirements match - students and programs (detailed in our scope article). In a scenario where there are multiple criteria, and we are using "or" logic between the criteria, students or programs just need to match any of the criteria.
This gets much more complicated when using "and" logic - in a scenario where there are multiple criteria, and we are using "and" logic between the criteria, Stellic uses the following order for evaluating General Requirement matching:
First, we look at all student-based inclusion filters
If a student does not satisfy any of the inclusion filters, discard this student. They will not have the General Requirement attach to their profile.
Next, we look at the program-based filters by examining the student's program enrollments one by one - if a student has multiple programs, we evaluate each program individually.
First we look at the program-based inclusion filters and evaluate the student's program enrollments individually.
If a student's program enrollment does not satisfy any of the inclusion filters, discard this program enrollment from auto-apply eligibility
Then we look at the program-based exclusion filters and once again evaluate the student's program enrollments individually.
If a student's program enrollment satisfies all program based exclusion filters, discard this program enrollment from auto-apply eligibility.
If the student's program enrollment did not get discarded at either of the above steps, consider this a matched program enrollment.
If none of the student's program enrollments matched, discard this student from auto-apply eligibility.
Lastly, we look at all student-based exclusion filters
If a student does not satisfy some filter, discard this student from auto-apply eligibility (note that in order to satisfy an exclusion filter, the student needs to not match the criteria in the filter).
At this point, the student matches the General Requirement if they have passed through all of the above checks, and the General Requirement will be auto-applied to the student's profile.
Cases Where General Requirements Will Not Attach to a Student
In instances where we want to ensure that a student's progress will not change, we will avoid attaching new General Requirements to a student. In the following cases, the General Requirement will not consider the program as an eligible program for eligibility:
A student is archived, everything on the student's Progress is read only
A student's program is locked
A program lives inside of an awarded Diploma (as part of the graduation clearance process within Stellic)
A program lives inside of a Diploma with an active Grad Clearance application
Combining Criteria Within A General Requirement's Auto-Apply Eligibility
Let's take a deeper look at General Requirements that have multiple criteria for auto-applying, as General Requirements with a single criteria are much simpler to understand. There are six general types of logic for how General Requirements attach to students or programs:
Includes either of these criteria
Includes all of these criteria
Excludes either of these criteria
Excludes all of these criteria
Includes one criteria or excludes another
Includes one criteria and excludes another
Let's choose a specific set of criteria as examples for this exercise, and then examine each of the six types of logic using this example -
student enrollment level: undergraduate (group A)
program school: engineering (group B)
1. Includes undergraduate students OR includes programs from the school of engineering means that we would look at any students that are undergraduate OR programs from the school of engineering. This means that all undergraduate students, and all programs from the school of engineering will receive this general requirement since the algorithm is looking for EITHER of these criteria in order to attach the General Requirement. For example, an undergraduate student with an art program (since they match the undergraduate criterion) and a graduate student with an engineering program (since they have an engineering program) would both receive this General Requirement.
2. Includes undergraduate students and includes programs from the school of engineering means that we will look at students that are undergraduate enrollment level AND have a program from the school of engineering - so we take the intersection of these populations. Our students from our previous example (the undergrad with the art program and the grad with the engineering program) will both be excluded from this General Requirement, and it would only attach to students that match both criteria.
3. Excludes undergraduate students or excludes programs from the school of engineering means that we will exclude students or programs that match either of these criteria. This means that the only students that are included are students that are not undergraduate and the only programs that are included are not within the school of engineering.
Exclude should be used cautiously as its starting basis is everything, and rules out only whatever criteria you specify. If you have a lot of enrollment levels you could end up including students that you didn't intend to - for example, in this situation that we have described, students with an enrollment level of non-degree would apply to this General Requirement as long as they didn't have a program within the school of engineering. For this reason, we recommend using include wherever possible.
4. Excludes undergraduate students and excludes program's school of engineering means that we will exclude students that are undergraduate AND have a program from the school of engineering. This means the students that are included could be graduate students with engineering programs, or undergraduate students with history programs, as some examples.
5. Includes undergraduate students or excludes programs from the school of engineering means that any students that match the inclusion criteria are included, OR any programs that don't match the exclusion criteria are included. In this scenario we'll include undergraduate students OR all programs outside of the school of engineering. This means that undergraduate students within the school of engineering would be matched to the General Requirement because they meet one of the criteria. Similarly, any program that is not within the school of engineering would also receive the General Requirement.
6. Includes undergraduate students and excludes programs from the school of engineering will only consider undergraduate students but will exclude any with programs from the school of engineering. Because the criteria states that it must exclude programs but also must INCLUDE undergraduate students, this General Requirement will not attach to any programs at all and will only attach to undergraduate students that do not have a program within the school of engineering.
Best Practices in Combining Eligibility Criteria
Whenever possible use include logic over exclude logic when building criteria. Exclude should be used cautiously as its starting basis is everything, and rules out only whatever criteria you specify.
When using program-based criteria, remember that each student's program enrollment will be evaluated individually. In other words, the program-based eligibility criteria is being used to describe one program, and each student's program is evaluated as a potential match.
When using "and" logic within the criteria, a student or program must match all inclusion criteria to be included, or match all exclusion criteria to be excluded. For example, if the criteria list that that program must have a BS degree and a minor type, it is likely that the program will never be excluded unless your minors have degrees associated with them.