Academics / Undergraduate Program / Client Project Challenge / ProjectA Deeper Understanding of College Graduation Rates Based on High School Data
July 8, 2024
“Cristo Rey St. Martin (CRSM) is unique in that our mission has us support our graduates to help them complete their college degrees. We like to use data to help us understand how to get better educational outcomes. We just completed a study with Northwestern students to analyze more than just ACT scores and GPA. We wanted to analyze data like courses (STEM, AP) taken in high school, grades in specific classes, and demographic data to get better predictions on college success. This will help us have deeper discussions with college admissions officers and target our resources more effectively,” said Mike Odiotti, Principal.
CRSM recently completed a project with Northwestern students. The project was in two parts.
In the Winter Quarter, a team of students worked with CRSM to prepare data. This was a data engineering project that pulled data from different sources—CRSM’s Salesforce data, which tracked every student, their test scores, and their GPA; CRSM’s educational system, which tracked every course and grade for students; and national data, which showed each student's college status.
“We enjoyed working with Shubham, Ria, and Zhe. They picked up quickly on the data, taught us some new tools, and even automated a process for us,” said Mary Lane, Salesforce Consultant.
With the data in hand, the second part of the project was with a student team from Northwestern’s Client Project Challenge class.
This team used different machine learning algorithms and data visualization to give insight into what predicts college success.
For example, with just GPA, the analysis helped CRSM determine the right breakpoint for when a high GPA predicts college success. The following graph shows this analysis.
“However, Aaryan, Jacob, and Bennie went beyond GPA in the analysis. They could determine how well STEM and AP classes predicted success rates. We also learned that some factors, like our demographic data, didn’t impact college completion. Based on this work, we are also implementing some ideas for maintaining the data and staying on top of emerging trends with our students,” said Miranda Eby, Communications and Analytics Manager.
Preston Kendall, President, added, “CRSM is committed to helping our students succeed in college. We all appreciate Mike Odiotti’s use of data to help us continually improve. This project is a great example of combining our data with advanced techniques to gain new insights.”
The student CPC team was Aaryan Agrawal, Jacob Choe, and Bennie Goldfarb.
The student data team was Shubham, Ria D’Souza, and Zhe Zhang
The faculty advisors were Professors Dashun Wang and Alexander Furnas.
The CRSM team was Preston Kendall, Mike Odiotti, Miranda Eby, and Mary Lane.
About Cristo Rey Saint Martin (CRSM):
Cristo Rey St. Martin is a Catholic learning community that empowers young people of limited means to become men and women of faith, purpose, and service. Through a rigorous college preparatory curriculum integrated with relevant work-study experience, CRSM students graduate ready to succeed in college and life. We exclusively serve families with limited economic means in Waukegan and North Chicago.