Understanding Student Data

Merit stores a small amount of data about your students for use on their profiles and potentially in future achievements.

What Student Data Does Merit Save?

Merit needs only students' first names, last names, email addresses, hometowns and zip codes to create profiles for students. However, you'll make your student pages more robust and get more out of Merit, by adding more information. Here's a list of all of the data Merit potentially remembers about your students:

  • First names
  • Middle names
  • Last names
  • Campus email addresses
  • Personal email addresses
  • Postal codes
  • Hometowns
  • States
  • Majors
  • Minors
  • Degrees
  • Class years
  • High school CEEB codes
  • Stakeholder (parent) email addresses 

 

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How Do Students Get Added to Merit?

Students cannot create Merit pages themselves. A member of your team must create a page for them. These pages can be created through either a student import or an achievement.

 

Student Imports

We recommend doing a student import at the start of every school year (potentially even every semester). This will ensure that all of your students have Merit pages created for them, and their information is up to date. 

Learn more about Merit's student import feature.

 

Achievements

When you publish an achievement using a spreadsheet, you will create a Merit page for any student who does not already have one. They will receive a welcome email prior to their achievement email.

Learn more about publishing achievements.

 

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Who Can Make Changes to Student Data?

Once students have pages created, either a member of your team or your students themselves can make changes to their saved Merit data.

 

Students

Students can make any necessary changes to their Merit page after logging in. They can edit or add to all of their Merit data. They cannot, however, alter the text inside their achievements. Only a member of your team can edit achievement text. 

Learn more about editing achievement text. 

 

Your Institution

If necessary, you can update the information on a student's Merit page. Visit the Students tab inside your account to alter their names, hometowns, majors, class years, email addresses, zip codes and more.

Learn more about editing students in Merit.

 

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How Does Student Information Change Over Time?

Students' saved Merit information will change over time as you regularly import students and publish achievements. Some rules apply, as described below:

 

Filling in Blanks

When your students are first added to Merit, many will likely be missing some of the saved data listed above. If a future achievement or import includes new information for your students, Merit will always fill in any blank fields for you.

For example, if a student doesn't have a degree saved to their Merit profile and your achievement spreadsheet contains one, Merit will automatically add it to their page.

 

Overwriting Data

Merit's rules for overwriting student data vary depending upon whether or not the student has logged in or updated their Merit page.

If a student has not yet logged into their Merit page, any new information from your spreadsheet will always overwrite their saved Merit data.

If a student has logged into Merit, some of their saved data will be protected and will not be affected by future imports or achievements.

The following saved Merit data is protected from change:

  • First names
  • Middle names
  • Last names
  • Postal codes
  • Hometowns
  • States

Other Merit data will always be overwritten through future imports or achievements. Merit does this to ensure that your students' data is always up to date. 

The following saved Merit data will be automatically overwritten: 

  • Majors
  • Minors
  • Degrees
  • Class years

Lastly, some Merit data is additive. When a future import or achievement contains information that differs from their saved data, Merit will not overwrite this data. Instead, it will add the new information to their previously saved Merit data, supplementing it.

The following saved Merit data will have new information added to it:

  • High school CEEB codes
  • Stakeholder (parent) email addresses 
  • Personal email addresses

 

What Does "Updated" Mean? 

A student's page will be designated as updated when they do any of the following actions:

  • Connect a LinkedIn account

  • Connect a Facebook account

  • Add a job to Merit page

  • Add an activity to Merit page 

  • Edit any information such as changing name, photo, or password

 

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