ACT and SAT readiness benchmark: the minimum scores that indicate students have a high probability of success in college courses.

• ACT benchmark: a benchmark score indicators a student has about a 50% chance of earning a B or better and about a 75% chance of earning a C or better in the corresponding college courses.
• SAT benchmark: a benchmark score indicates a student has about a 75% chance of earning a C or better in the corresponding college courses.

Dual enrollment: Courses taken during high school in which students receive both high school and college credit.

Early College High Schools: Organized programs of study in which students earn no less than 12 transferable college credit hours that count toward their high school diploma at no cost to students or their families.

Expected Family Contribution: the share of the net price of college attendance expected to be paid by a student’s family. It is based on a family’s taxable and nontaxable income, family size, the number of members going to college that school year and the student’s financial aid information.

Federal Pell Grants: financial support for low-income students — whose total family income of $50,000 or less — that does not have to be repaid.

First-year persistence rate: the percentage of freshmen in the first-time, full-time, bachelor’s degree-seeking cohort who were enrolled at the institution they first attended or transferred to another college or university the next fall.

Grade-level progression: The percentage of students who successfully advance from one grade to the next.

Net price: defined by the National Center for Education Statistics as the total cost of college attendance minus the average state, federal and institutional scholarship, grant aid, and all other types of state and federal financial aid that a student can expect to receive. 

Ninth-grade bulge: Ninth grade public enrollments that exceed that cohort’s eighth grade enrollments could be due to ninth grade retentions, drop-outs, transfers, or newly enrolled former home-school students — a possible indicator that too many middle graders were underprepared for high school.

Readiness gap: the gap between high school completion rates and the percentage of students meeting college readiness benchmarks.

SREB student progression rate: the percentage of first-time freshmen who complete a bachelor’s degree or remain enrolled or transfer to another institution after their initial enrollment.

Three-year and six-year graduation rates: the percentage of first-time freshmen who enter college in the fall term, remain at the same institution, and graduate within three years (at two-year institutions) or six years (at four-year institutions).