A total of 3,185 students completed the CIRP in 2005, which represents approximately 87.6% of the first-time, full-time, first-year students entering USC that year. A basic demographic breakdown of respondents looks like this:
The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) is an annual survey administered at colleges and universities nationwide. It allows the Division of Student Affairs to develop a profile of the first-time, full-time students entering the University of South Carolina each year. The survey collects information on each incoming student's background, opinions on current issues, and activities during the last year of high school. The CIRP is administered to incoming students the summer before they actually enroll at USC, during placement testing weekends and new student orientation. Since the survey is administered to incoming students at schools across the country, national norm data are available for all survey items.