This first-year report of the National Effective Transfer Consortium (NETC) summarizes the progress made by the member colleges in creating standardized measures of actual and expected transfer rates and of transfer effectiveness, and establishing a database that would enable valid comparisons among NETC colleges. Following background information on the NETC, the report proposes a new definition of transfer rate (i.e., the number of transfers divided by the number of non-reenrolling students), arguing that this definition more specifically identifies the number of students who could reasonably transfer rather than the number of students out of the entire student body who transferred. The second section explores various factors that help determine a range of expected transfer rates for an individual college, including the local business environment, federal policies, college mission, academic program, and student demographics, and student services. Drawing from the NETC database, this section suggests that colleges with a high percentage of full-time students tend to have higher transfer rates than colleges with a low percentage of full-time students. The third section proposes a method for measuring transfer effectiveness that does not penalize colleges with large vocational/technological programs and, frequently, a large pool of students who neither want to transfer nor do so. The proposed model defines transfer effectiveness as the number of students who transfer compared to the number of students that are expected to transfer. Arguing that transfer effectiveness depends on a college's organizational environment and its successful implementation of specific transfer-related strategies, the report concludes with a college self-assessment guide. (WJT)