Penn administers enrolled student survey

Does the Office of Institutional Research & Analysis keep sending you emails?

Penn is currently administering the Enrolled Student Survey, first sent out on Feb. 10. The ESS is a voluntary survey sent to all undergraduates that is meant to help gauge the student experience at Penn. Students are prompted to answer questions on their academic experiences, interactions with faculty members, extracurricular activities, health and wellbeing and more.

Compared to the 2011 version of the survey, this year’s questionnaire has more questions regarding students’ stress and overall well-being. New questions ask whether students feel “Penn takes reports of sexual assault seriously,” “administrators at Penn are genuinely concerned about [their] welfare” and if in the past year they have “felt so depressed it was difficult to function.” Rob Nelson, the executive director for Education and Academic Planning, declined to comment on specifics of the survey in order to not interfere with incoming results.

Nelson said that the ESS is one of a few regularly administered surveys that help administrators in their decision-making processes.

“We administer a number of surveys — the senior survey, the enrolled student survey and the freshman survey are the standard ones,” Nelson said. “Administrators from across the University look at the results and use survey results in their planning.”

In fact, when the Task Force on Student Psychological Health and Welfare released its report on Feb. 17, it referenced results from previous freshman, senior and ESS surveys.

The ESS was first administered at Penn during the 2002-2003 academic year, and has been administered every four years since.

As many of these topics are of major concern at most universities today, the bulk of the survey is actually a collaboration with a number of peer schools. “The survey is given at places like Harvard and Princeton and Cornell in addition to Penn,” Nelson said.

Nelson added, however, that some questions are specific to Penn.

The window to complete the survey closes on March 8. Results are expected by the summer.

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