The student full-time equivalent (FTE) measure has a long history in U.S. postsecondary education. Credit hours, contact hours, and their derivative FTE have been used as proxies for both student and faculty effort. FTE ultimately became a core measure for planning, evaluating and assessing human resource allocation within higher education. Despite questions about the appropriateness of using a single standard to assess effort across diverse institutions, levels, and programs that have been raised since the inception of this measure, FTE is still informative and widely utilized. With this in mind, it is important for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to ensure its methodology for estimating FTE using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) is sound. NCES calculates an annualized student FTE from data collected through IPEDS. Historically, this calculation relied upon the distinction between undergraduate, graduate, and first-professional students. Recently, the IPEDS post-baccalaureate award levels were reclassified, resulting in the elimination of the first-professional designation. Therefore, the first-professional student enrollment data used to calculate the FTE measure for professional students in the past is no longer available. This paper first details the recent methodological changes for the graduate and professional student 12-month FTE calculation within IPEDS. It then reviews variations in practices for calculating graduate and professional student FTE across states. Finally, suggestions for improving the current calculation of graduate and doctor's-professional practice student FTE in IPEDS are presented. An appendix lists the individuals who were interviewed. for this paper.