By Jeremy Tiers, Senior Director of Admissions Services
3 minute read
Last week we were going through a client’s data in Slate to help their admissions counselors identify which admitted students may be closing in on making a decision.
To identify who may be ready, here’s what we did.
First, we took all of last year’s (2022) non-athlete undergraduate new first year students and figured out the average number of days between when they submitted their application and when they submitted their deposit. In this instance, the total was 123 days. We chose to filter out prospective student athletes because the school’s coaches will focus on converting that group.
Next, we took all the current non-athlete admitted undergraduate students from this year’s class (2023) and figured out how many of them submitted their application within 15 days on either side of that 123 day average – that would be anyone between 108-138 days.
After finding the total for that 2023 group (it was 149 students), we separated them into those who have visited campus (14) and those who have not (135).
From there we wanted to include one more important data point – engagement. We took all of last year’s 2022 non-athlete undergraduate new first year students and figured out the average number of opened emails for students who had confirmed/deposited by January 12, 2022 – this date can be changed to the date of whenever you run your reports. In our case, the average was 23.
Having all our key data points, we separated those 149 students from the 2023 class into four final groups. Each of our totals is in parentheses.
Group 1: 2023 non-athlete, undergraduate admits who have visited and have opened 24 or more emails (10)
Group 2: 2023 non-athlete, undergraduate admits who have visited and have opened less than 24 emails (4)
Group 3: 2023 non-athlete, undergraduate admits who have not visited and have opened 24 or more emails (28)
Group 4: 2023 non-athlete, undergraduate admits who have not visited and have opened less than 24 emails (107)
We recommended that our client’s admissions counselors prioritize their outreach to Group 1 first, then Group 3, then Group 2, and finally Group 4.
The goal of that personalized outreach should be to figure out one or more of the following:
- How are these students feeling about making their college decision?
- What do they have left to do before making their decision?
- When do they see themselves making a decision?
- Who are they relying on most to help them with their decision?
If you ask direct questions in your emails and text messages to help you determine one or more of those things (which you absolutely should do), and a student’s answer is “I’m not sure”, follow-up with, “Help me understand what you’re not sure about, <First or Preferred>”. Probing and asking for context is critical, especially at this stage.
Once you’ve determined which students feel like they have everything they need to make an informed decision, I encourage you to have confidence and ask for their deposit.
You can replicate this strategy both now and in the coming weeks and months. There are also additional data points that could help you narrow your list(s) even further. If you’d like to talk about those, or something I said in this article, let’s do it. You can 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.