• Identify students who are not enrolled in the spring semester or are no longer classified as first year or senior students (otherwise known as “ineligible” students); NSSE does not contact ineligible students, nor will it use them for response rate calculations.
• Update required information for students,such as email address and enrollment status.
• Add or update optional information for students, such as race/ethnicity, SAT/ACT scores, or Group fields (up to 5).

This option cannot be used for submitting new students previously excluded from your population file. If a significant number of first-year or senior students were missing from your population file, please contact NSSE's Campus Liaison.

• Download your student population file from the Population File Update section of the Interface. This file will be prefilled with your student data and will include a new “Eligibility” column.
• Mark students that are no longer eligible with “N” or “NO” in the eligibility column (not the Report Sample column). Note that simply removing students from the data file does NOT render them ineligible; updates must be explicit for each student record”. “Y” or “YES” indicates firstyear and senior student are still eligible to complete NSSE.
• If updating other fields, simply update the corrected information in the appropriate record.
• Use CSV file format only.
• Upload the file through the Interface. Please do not email files with student records.

As shown below, once you submit your population file update, several items on the Interface will appear:

1. Notifications Box. A message will appear in a feedback box indicating the status of your file.
2. Update Status. The status of your update will be shown along with your submission’s time stamp. You may see one of the following pieces of text:
   • Received with Suggested Updates (indicates the file was received and is now in the queue for processing, however there will be some records flagged in the ‘File Review’ file that should be reviewed. Flagged records do not necessarily indicate a problem, but there may be an inconsistency or suspected issue with formatting, for example).
   • Received (indicates the file was received and is now in the queue for processing)
   • Failed (indicates that the file is not formatted correctly or is missing required
     information; it will need to be corrected before submitting again)
3. File Review. You will be able to review any feedback about your update immediately by clicking on the link in this section. If the update failed or if our program has any suggestions, issues will be highlighted in this file. See further instructions on the Institution Interface.

An email summary will be sent within a half an hour of the update after file processing has been completed by our system. The table within the email (shown in part below) details the changes made to a category. For example, if you change the class level for 5 students that were previously marked as first year students, the table will show that 5 records have been updated from the first-year field. You must confirm the accuracy of your update by reviewing the email summary and/or viewing the population file on the Interface after you have made the update. Uploading a file does not guarantee the intended changes were made.