If your university enrolls a lot of undergraduates, April can be the cruelest month. Typically, May 1 is the deadline most institutions use as their candidate’s reply date, when students offered admission must let the college know if they plan to accept the offer to enroll or not. The percentage of students who accept your […]
If you’re like a lot of people in higher ed, you have a lot of people outside higher ed who want to help you with your enrollment goals (full disclosure: I do too.) But too often, the companies that have convinced themselves that they’ve cracked the code–that they’ve reduced complexity to simplicity–will hire young, completely […]
I once knew an Enrollment VP who was dedicated to his data: He could tell you the inquiry-to-applicant conversion rates by geo-market. He knew how SAT and GPAs varied by gender. His financial aid expenditures? Three, maybe four years off the top of his head. Having recall like this is impressive, and given the choice […]
I say it all the time. You probably do, too. Good enrollment management practice starts with good data, and good analysis of the data. It’s hard to argue that point. The word “starts” is critical in that sentence, however. I’m often reminded of this graphic, which is a good one for people just getting started […]
In case you’re not watching March Madness, Drake is the darling of the NCAA basketball tournament this year, with good reason. It’s a great story; everyone loves a plot like this. They just beat a higher-seeded team from the SEC by ten points in their first-round game. It goes to show how hard it is […]
I came across some data compiled by University of Tennessee professor Robert Kelchen, and found it quite compelling, precisely because it doesn’t conform to our biases. It’s a simple set and a small table, but I immediately found a dozen ways to look at it. One is included below. It shows enrollment growth over ten […]
In January, 2017, in the middle of a rare snowstorm in Memphis, I presented to the students and parents at three private high schools. Part of my talk focused on the paradox of complexity in college admission: Everyone says we hate it, but the institutions that introduce more of it tend to be rewarded with […]
I was talking with a colleague about the search for an academic dean, and about participating in the interview process with candidates. I confided that–while I found it helpful to see if the candidates seemed collegial, and to tease out what their relationship with EM at their current institution was like–I really had no sense […]
If you sit in the Director of Admissions seat, or the VP EM seat, or even the Provost or Presidential seat, you probably get a lot of solicitations from people who want to help you with your recruiting challenges. They will often assure you they’re not selling anything, but just want to hear about your […]
I have a friend. We’ve been great pals since the second day of first grade. He has a son who is going through the admissions process this year as a high school senior, and his grandparents really want him to go to Purdue. But the word on the street or in the school is that […]
Enrollment VP 