  Simplified categorizations have often led to college students being labeled
as full-time or part-time students. However, at many universities student
enrollment patterns can be much more complicated, as it is not uncommon for
students to alternate between full-time and part-time enrollment each semester
based on finances, scheduling, or family needs. While prior research has
established full-time students maintain better outcomes then their part-time
counterparts, limited study has examined the impact of enrollment patterns or
strategies on academic outcomes. In this paper, we applying a Hidden Markov
Model to identify and cluster students' enrollment strategies into three
different categorizes: full-time, part-time, and mixed-enrollment strategies.
Based the enrollment strategies we investigate and compare the academic
performance outcomes of each group, taking into account differences between
first-time-in-college students and transfer students. Analysis of data
collected from the University of Central Florida from 2008 to 2017 indicates
that first-time-in-college students that apply a mixed enrollment strategy are
closer in performance to full-time students, as compared to part-time students.
More importantly, during their part-time semesters, mixed-enrollment students
significantly outperform part-time students. Similarly, analysis of transfer
students shows that a mixed-enrollment strategy is correlated a similar
graduation rates as the full-time enrollment strategy, and more than double the
graduation rate associated with part-time enrollment. Such a finding suggests
that increased engagement through the occasional full-time enrollment leads to
better overall outcomes.
