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In my last post, I wrote about how admissions works, although the lesson, perhaps, is that the term “admissions office” means very different things at different institutions. And while it’s still true that we in admissions and enrollment management all agree on one thing-that if a student never applies, they won’t enroll-it’s also true that the final step in the process is the processing and delivery of financial aid. A caveat: This is hard to grasp on the first pass-if it sometimes does not seem to make sense, that just means you probably understand it better than you think you do. I recommend paper, a pencil, and some note-taking to get you through this. It’s going to be challenging to navigate. About 15 years ago, I started gauging the age of my audience during presentations by putting an image on the screen. It’s the floorboard of an automobile, showing part of the brake and floormat for some context. You’re likely to notice the bright red carpet before you notice something else that doesn’t look quite right: To the left of the brake is a silver button, a little bigger than a quarter. I ask the audience members to raise their […]

In my last post on student recruitment, I mentioned that recruitment and admissions-although often thought of as the same thing-are actually very different functions at some universities. But because there are about 1,600 four-year public and private, not-for-profit colleges and universities that are at least nominally selective, the line and distinction between the two varies based on institutional type, market position, and mission. For context and clarity: IPEDS collects admissions data on all institutions that say they are not “Open Admission.” Looking at the 2,075 four-year public and not-for-profit institutions that admit freshmen and report admission data serves as the basis for discussion today; among them, we see that 466 are in practice or philosophy admitting 100% of applicants. Beyond that, however, there are millions of students enrolling at for-profit institutions and community colleges for whom admissions data is not available, and won’t be discussed here. There is one thing admissions and enrollment professionals all agree on: If a student does not apply, they will never enroll. Thus, in a nutshell, recruitment attempts to generate as much interest, and usually as many applications, as is possible. Even if a university gets 20 applications for every seat it has in the […]

It has been said that all the world is simply a struggle between the “Haves” and “Have Nots.” How you view admissions and recruitment at your university probably depends a lot on which type of university you work at, whether you’re at a public, private, or for-profit institution, and-especially-what the mission of your institution looks like. Are you at one of the private “Haves” or perhaps one of the public “Have Nots?” Are your founding and mission based on access for a wide swath of the population, or is your purpose designed to serve the elite students-and only the elite students-who have risen to the top of the pyramid of academic achievement we sometimes call “merit?” It makes a big difference. In my first post in this series, I wrote about marketing, and how all higher-education institutions do it to some degree. I also mentioned that the enrollment management and/or admissions/financial aid departments are leading the charge when it comes to the four components of marketing (price, product, place, and promotion). And in this post, we’ll get down to “brass tacks,” where we actually apply those concepts as we attempt to enroll a class in the next term that is […]