Check College Enrollment With the Clearinghouse

If your program subscribes to StudentTracker for Outreach from the National Student Clearinghouse, TRIOPilot writes the request file for you. You choose the students, download the file, and upload it to the Clearinghouse through your own account. The Clearinghouse then sends its reports to your account, as it does today.

TRIOPilot never sends anything to the Clearinghouse and never signs in to your Clearinghouse account. The file goes from your computer to the Clearinghouse, through you.

Before You Start

You need your program's Clearinghouse account details, once:

1. Go to Settings, choose the Reporting tab, and find the National Student Clearinghouse card.
2. Enter your six-digit Account Code and the Organization Name on your Clearinghouse account. The name can have up to 40 characters and no quotes, commas or periods, because the Clearinghouse does not accept them.
3. Choose Save Clearinghouse Details.

Only admins can change these details. Until both are saved, the download on the Students page says what is missing: an admin gets a link to this card, and an advisor or assistant who can download is asked to have a program admin add them.

Download the Request File

1. Go to Students and choose the program year you want. The APR Report page links there too, for the year you are viewing (Download a Clearinghouse file from Students).
2. Select the students to send, or leave nothing selected and use the search, status tabs and Advanced filter to show the students you want. With nothing selected, the file names every student your current view shows, not just the page on screen.
3. Choose Clearinghouse, next to Export.
4. The Download for Clearinghouse dialog shows how many students the file will name, how many have no date of birth, how many searches start on the first day of the program year because a student's date is not recorded (see the table below), and anyone left out and why.
5. Choose Download File. Your browser saves a text file whose name starts with your account code, for example 123456_StudentTracker_Request_20261010.txt.

Who can download: the same people who can Export on the Students page. That is admins by default; an admin can grant Export Students to advisors and assistants in Settings → Team. Each download is recorded in the Audit Log as Exported Clearinghouse File.

Upload It to the Clearinghouse

Upload the file at https://ftps.nslc.org/ with your program's Clearinghouse Secure FTP account. Never email the file: it holds student names and dates of birth, and the Clearinghouse does not accept files by email.

The Clearinghouse emails the people on your account's notification list when your reports are ready in your account's Receive folder. The detail report carries each student's TRIOPilot ID in its Requestor Return Field, so every row matches exactly one student.

What the File Holds

The file follows the Clearinghouse's non-consent request layout (its guide "Creating StudentTracker Non-Consent Based Request Files Using Excel"): a header row with your account code and organization name, one row per student, and a closing row. For each student it holds:

• First and last name, up to 20 characters each. Both are required, so a student without one is left out. Accented letters are sent as plain letters (José as Jose), quotes and apostrophes are removed (O'Brien as OBrien), and a comma or period becomes a space (Park, Jr. as Park Jr).
• Middle initial, when your program records one.
• Date of birth, when recorded. A student without one is still included, but the Clearinghouse matches far fewer students without a date of birth, so add it to the profile when you can.
• Search begin date: the day from which the Clearinghouse looks for enrollment and degrees. It depends on your program:

| Program | The search starts on | |---|---| | EOC and Talent Search | The first day of the program year you are viewing | | Upward Bound and UBMS | The student's High School Graduation Date | | SSS | The student's First Enrollment Date | | McNair | The student's Bachelor's Degree Date | | VUB | The student's Date of Last Project Service |

When the field is blank, is not a real date (such as a "not applicable" code), or is later than today, the search starts on the first day of the program year you are viewing. The dialog counts these students, so you can record the date first and search from it.

• The student's TRIOPilot ID, in the Requestor Return Field.

No Social Security number is sent: TRIOPilot does not store one, and the non-consent layout does not use it.

A student with no record in the program year you are viewing is left out; switch the program year to include them.

Good to Know

• Your Clearinghouse subscription limits how many records you can send each year. Check your tier before you send a large list.
• A student the Clearinghouse does not find is not proof that the student did not enroll. Some colleges do not report, and some students block their records.
• TRIOPilot does not read the Clearinghouse's reports yet. Enter the results on each profile as you do today. See Run your APR.