By Jeremy Tiers, Senior Director of Admissions Services
2 minute read
After last week’s article, a handful of admissions counselors emailed me looking for additional advice and tips to help generate more deposits.
If you’re looking for a commitment from an admitted student, here’s something that a lot of your competitors aren’t doing that you should definitely try.
Contact the admitted student’s parent(s), preferably by scheduling a short phone call, but you can also send them an email.
Parents continue to be the biggest outside influencer for most students, and we’re finding that many are exerting greater influence when it comes to their child’s college decision.
Hopefully you’ve built some trust and rapport with this group versus sending nothing but transactional reminders from the office of admissions.
When you connect with parents, I want you to let them know you’re excited about the possibility of their son or daughter choosing your school, and mention you’re also about to encourage the them to submit their deposit. Before you do that though, you wanted to make sure all of their questions have been answered, and you would like to ask them for advice on how to best have that conversation with the student.
You could say something like, “I’m really excited about the idea of <Insert their child’s name> being a student here, so I wanted to come to you and ask for advice on how to best have that conversation about making it official. What would you suggest I do?”
Making the parents feel valued and like an ally has proven to be a huge difference maker at this point of the college search.
What we’ve also found is that after you complete your call with the parent, or after they read your email, more often than not they’ll share the fact that you reached out with their son or daughter….which is great! Hopefully the parent will also give them the thumbs-up to take that next step.
Now, if you’re reading this and saying to yourself, “But Jeremy, some of those parent conversations will end up not going well and they will bring up concerns or maybe even tell me that the student is leaning towards (or has chosen) another school.”
You’re absolutely right. But remember, no admissions counselor converts 100% of their admitted students – not even close.
Sometimes the value of this approach will be getting that “no” without asking the student, or getting the chance to work through a concern or objection before you make the ask.
I encourage you to test out this proven strategy before you ask the student (or before you ask them again) for their deposit or commitment.
If you’d like to talk more about something I said in this article, let’s do it. Simply reply or email me here.
And if you found this article helpful, forward it to someone else on your campus who could also benefit from reading it.