>It's pretty complicated to say the least. I was hoping I would be able to write a statement that just checked for a students existence in each subquery. I was thinking of using ICASE but I wasn't sure if I could use that in conjunction with "Where exists ( Select * from level5)".
You can use CASE with EXISTS
CASE
WHEN EXISTS (Select 1 from level5) THEN 5
WHEN EXISTS (Select 1 from level4) THEN 4
...
ELSE 0
END AS StudentLevel
--sb--