EdTek Services, Inc.

From text messages to videos, games, and confetti filled game tubes, America’s colleges and universities are increasingly creative when sending out acceptance letters. This trend of creativity with informing prospective students of their acceptance is apparently coming at the expense of denials.

Is this “creative renaissance” on the part of enrollment leaders, an expression of creative freedom, or the sign of true innovation meeting its ceiling? In order to attract college qualified students in a shrinking demographic and a troubled economy does spending money on flashy ways to inform a prospective student of their acceptance really secure the class the institution desires? Or is it a way that allows institutional leaders to feel like they are innovating enrollment when really they are just adding another expense line to their budget.

Here are some ways for non-profit institutions to improve their acceptance to start ratio without paying for games, prizes, videos and customized merchandise:

Focus on your target demographic and employ a communications strategy that speaks directly to them
Personalize communications by having professional admissions personnel interact with them throughout the enrollment process
Avoid delegating communications to your student volunteer “Admissions Ambassadors”
Develop an enrollment process flow and write scripts for your admissions staff on what conversation to have, with whom, and when (in the process)
1. Telling your staff to just make phone calls without providing a written guideline for what should be covered is asking for inefficiency
Establish conversion metrics for each member of your staff and if they cannot make calls in the fall and spring because they are on the college tour circuit… stop participating in the college tour circuit, you will find a tremendous improvement in your conversions by freeing up this valuable time (and it will save you A LOT of money)

For more ideas about how to improve enrollment conversions without adding to your expenses contact: dominick@edtekservices.com .

Labels: accreditation accreditation consulting Admissions criteria college board EdTek education consultants higher education Online learning marketing

3/27/2009
Dominick Miciotta
Comments (0)

A Word About Assessment & SAT Scores

Do students achieve the stated learning objectives? What is the percentage of faculty with terminal degrees? What is the acceptance rate? What College Board http://www.collegeboard.com/ tier groups comprise your new class? We see program assessment, classroom assessment and the noted "general" assessment categories. Each provides a set standard of practices and a schedule for reporting results. When navigating the minefield of assessment with an eye that is focused on what's important, how do we determine what counts?

The answer may be an easy, 'it depends on your perspective' but if we had to select one assessment of the higher education experience, what would (or should) it be?

Those of us who work in higher education are aware of the challenges of pleasing multiple constituencies: administrators, trustees, directors, regulators, accreditation commissions, faculty governance, unions and not to mention students and their parents. We debate assessment regularly. This article discussed the issue of making SAT scores optional during the admissions process http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/26/sat. In this case we are assessing the validity and impact on making SAT scores optional as an admissions requirement. This is an important issue to discuss and the early results of this study appear to reveal what we could have guessed: dropping the SAT as an admissions requirement increases diversity and average GPA's of the incoming class and in public institutions results in higher academic achievement. Great! All public institutions should drop the SAT as a requirement. Since public institutions are usually more affordable and dropping this requirement increases diversity and diverse populations tend to have a greater financial need, from an enrollment marketing perspective, this is a win-win-win situation.

Labels: Admissions criteria college board EdTek higher education ONline learning online learning affordability Online learning marketing rural school districts SAT Scores school fuel costs

General

11/17/2008
Staff
Comments (0)

The MACCRAY school district in rural Minnesota is making every weekend last three days.

Students who live in Maynard, Clara City and Raymond, Minnesota will not have to go school on Mondays when autumn rolls around. In order to save an estimated $85,000 in administrative and transportation costs, the State Board of Education has decided to compress the school week into four days.

We predict that this will become a common occurrence in the rural areas of the country. Since it is established that $4 a gallon for gas is the standard now instead of a market abberation, the realities of fuel costs are starting to become apparent.

Also of note in the article is the mention that the four day school week affects the parents, many of whom now have to juggle schedules in order to make sure that their children are supervised on Mondays.

http://www.startribune.com/local/22872239.html?location_refer=Homepage:highlightModules:3

Labels: EdTek ONline learning rural school districts school fuel costs