To those who work in enrollment management, the warmth of summer is often chilled by the reality of summer melt. Each year, a significant number of admitted students fail to enroll—10-40% per Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research! Their reasons for doing so are as varied as the students themselves.
After May 1, your focus will rightfully turn to confirming the fall class. But there’s still time and potential to recruit new students—especially late-to-enroll first year students, transfer students, and adult learners.
When it comes to recruiting transfer students, enrollment professionals live with two contradicting truths: The transfer market offers considerable potential; and there’s rarely enough money (or time) to thoroughly engage and cultivate this population.
To effectively reach and engage adult learners, we need to address their hopes and concerns in the marketing content (ads, landing pages, brochures and especially on the website). Chances are your institution has what these adult learners are looking for: affordable, concise and career-focused degrees or professional certificates. Make it easy for them to find the opportunities (and support) your institution offers.
The start of the spring semester brings a familiar pressure to most admissions teams. Now is the time to focus on the all-encompassing task of confirming the incoming class. There are multiple strategies to this step beyond sending a welcome packet. Like enrollment management in general, they all have value (if done correctly). The challenge is having the time, while also maintaining the ongoing cycle of enrollment (more on that below).
The National Student Clearinghouse reports that transfer students are on the rise and now account for 13.2% of all undergraduates, up from 12.5% in 2022. Now is the time to start recruiting them for the spring semester. Here’s how and why.
There is no “one size fits all” approach to community college enrollment marketing but there are certain traits they share that can guide your strategy. Here are the steps you should take to craft your unique enrollment marketing strategy for your community college.
It’s transfer season, the time of year when 1/3 of the nation’s college students look to switch schools. Studies like the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s Signature Report estimate that 1.3 million students transfer each year. One point three million. That’s a big piece of the recruitment market. It’s no wonder so many institutions have amped up their transfer recruitment efforts. But has it paid off?
In our last post, we demonstrated how digital marketing campaigns can yield significant enrollment results — especially at key points of the recruitment cycle. In another example, we worked with the University of North Carolina, Wilmington (UNCW) to grow summer enrollment for transfer and late-to-enroll first-year students.
The recruitment cycle is fraught with make-it-or-break-it deadlines, perhaps none more critical than May 1, Decision Day. As prospective students weigh their acceptance and financial aid offers, colleges ramp up communications in an attempt to secure deposits.
Adult learners: They represent 40% of the higher education market and they are (generally speaking) the type of student that every institution wants: mature, focused, and committed to success. So why not make it easier for them to find your institution and enroll?
Just as I was starting a new digital enrollment campaign for a community college, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released its report on the effectiveness of community colleges as pathways to degree completion. It’s always nice when the research matches the experiences of those who live the day-to-day reality — in this case, the students at Three Rivers Community College (TRCC) in Connecticut.
May 1, which looms large in the minds of admissions professionals, has come and gone, marking the end of the recruitment cycle. Now we tally up our deposits, take a vacation, and then start preparing for the next cycle, right? Hardly.
Maybe (just maybe) recruitment would be easier if we listened to what college-bound students tell us – especially about what they’re looking for and where they look. The good news is, they’re forthright with the information. Study after study reveals the same basic facts: Institutional websites matter (perhaps more than anything else); prospective students search for schools online; they look for specific information, which they fully expect us to deliver.
I wonder what it’s like in the Villanova admissions office these days. I always imagined that working enrollment at a Division I school — especially after an NCAA victory — would be a piece of cake: you know, opening envelope after envelope, plucking the best candidates, nothing but abundance!