@zsmith93 There is another approach you can use in SAS, using a custom FORMAT and the PUTC function Click on links for documentation. If for example you just want to produce a report, then there is no need to generate the extra variable (classification) you could just output the m_major variable in a report and apply the custom format ($stem). This saves space in your dataset and processing time, as you don't have to run through the dataset twice to generate a report.   /* Create example dataset */ data collegepayback ; input m_major : $20. ; cards ; Physics Geography Arts English ; run ; /* Create a Custom Format */ proc format ; value $stem "Physics","Geography" = "STEM" OTHER = "nonSTEM" ; run ; data newTable ; set collegepayback ; /* PUTC function applies the $stem format to m_major, converting it to STEM/nonSTEM */ classification=putc(m_major,"$stem.") ; run ; ... View more

@zsmith93 wrote: https://www.kaggle.com/wsj/college-salaries#degrees-that-pay-back.csv but when I run my proc's the process just keeps running indefinitely. Show us your code, or better yet, the LOG (the entire LOG, not just the errors) by pasting the LOG into the window that appears when you click on the {i} icon. ... View more

More on variable lists.  The little program I posted used variable lists in these statements: length Major $40 Starting Median Pchange P10 P25 P75 P90 8; informat _numeric_ comma.; input major -- p90; So there are 4 variable lists in there.  The LENGTH statement has two. The first one is just the single variable Major. The second is a space delimited list of names.  The INFORMAT statement uses the special keyword _NUMERIC_ to indicate all numeric variables that are defined (so far) in the data step.  You can also use _CHARACTER_ and _ALL_ as variable lists. The IINPUT statement uses a positional variable list.  Basically the double hyphen means that SAS should take all of the variables (by their order in the dataset) from the first name to the last name.   You can also use a single hyphen to get a range of names that end in a numeric suffix.  Example: VAR1 - VAR23  And you can use a colon suffix to get all variables that start with a common prefix.  Example:  P:    ... View more

It's never that easy sadly, The data I referenced via the link was additional data; I wanted to see if I could upload and run it successfully while I tried to figure out what to do with my large dataset problem. In short, my professors wanted datasets that pertained to local areas so unfortunately the I'm a few centuries off.   Fortunately, as I'm typing this I realized my large dataset could just be broken down to its individual years then merged using SAS So one facepalm for me /)_- and a thank you to you for, well just answering these messages haha Cheers! ... View more