For most students, the college decision is a choice filled with uncertainty and pressures from all sides. Encouragement and advice from family and friends, as well as public opinion, can play into the selection, blurring priorities and risking a less-than-perfect match. Failure to find the right school can have a prolonged impact on a student’s educational experience. Undermatched students are about 80% less likely to graduate in four years. They are also 70% less likely to earn their degree within six years.
While students have many advisors during the college search process, the role of admissions professionals is often overlooked. What students need most during the college decision-making process is clarity and an impartial guide. Admissions professionals can build trust and foster better outcomes by focusing on strategies that help students identify institutions that truly align with their goals, values, and needs. This blog will outline actionable steps for supporting students in their search.
Understanding What Students Value in a College
The college decision goes beyond elite reputations and family traditions. It focuses on how a school matches a student’s unique needs and personality. Helping a teen select a college requires insight into student expectations about their education and lifestyle. We can break this down into four specific categories.
Academic Programs
While the college experience offers many exciting opportunities, the leading goal is getting an education and a related degree. A student’s interest in the school’s academic programs and available resources is paramount to a successful decision.
Campus Culture
The school’s culture, curated by its mission, values, size, and student body, will have the biggest impact on students’ lifestyles. Students may need information about class size, student communities, extracurricular offerings, and weekend activities. Providing information about the diversity of the student body and group opportunities can help students recognize environments that are most likely to help them recognize a sense of belonging.
Affordability
While it should never be the only factor, cost will be a factor in most students’ decisions. Providing information about various types of financial aid, grants, loans, and scholarship opportunities can help students recognize all their available options.
Location
Alongside campus culture, location is pivotal in helping students achieve their lifestyle expectations. Location defines the environment a student will enjoy, including climate, atmosphere (urban, suburban, or rural), entertainment opportunities, proximity to family, and more.
Understanding a student’s priorities across these vital factors can help admissions teams provide clear information that can help guide a final decision.
Building Authentic Connections With Prospective Students
Fostering a sense of belonging is a crucial factor in making a good student-college match. Admissions teams are among the first relationships students make when considering a college. When professionals take the time to actively listen to individual student needs and aspirations, they can identify available resources to meet the student’s needs. Colleges can help garner other connections for students by encouraging current students and alums to share their experiences with prospective students.
Beyond making initial connections, students will be interested in the lines of communication that will be available to them in the future. When colleges have services in place for students to ask questions and express concerns, students can be confident their voices will be heard.
Using Data to Guide the Right Fit
No two student profiles are precisely the same. But in the age of information, students often become overwhelmed with data. Also, colleges become inundated with applications based on topical attractions that fail to consider the school’s unique personality and offerings.
With the right data, college admissions teams can better identify and connect with students most likely to thrive at their institution. Helping incoming students find the right match requires a careful blend of leveraging historical data to understand which student profiles are most successful at your institution and using predictive analytics to help match prospective students with the right programs and resources.
FlippedApp from Concept3D provides admissions teams with specific data to find, engage, and recruit students who meet your strategic enrollment priorities to boost enrollment yields with perfect matches. The platform works to help higher education institutions increase reach, connect with students who are a perfect fit, and communicate with students in a way that develops a more personal and efficient recruitment process.
Streamline and Improve Admissions
With access to student profiles that are an exact fit for your institution’s criteria, you can:
- Combat rising recruitment costs by focusing on best-fit matches.
- Increase applications through direct communication.
- Boost yield by focusing resources and investing in matches.
Tailor Marketing Efforts
Tools that enable you to make better connections and tailor communications allow you to:
- Find students who match with your institution’s characteristics.
- Remove barriers in the process of sharing targeted information.
- Bypass the spam folder with direct communications.
Support Efficiency in Enrollment Management
The right information enables admissions teams to make the most of limited time and resources by focusing on matches, rather than chasing leads, to:
- Boost ROI on marketing and recruitment investments.
- Strengthen the sense of community and belonging with personalized dialogue with prospective students.
Providing Resources to Support Decision-Making
Clarity is key when helping a teen select a college.
There’s no shortage of information in the college decision. In fact, an onslaught of data can do more harm than good if students aren’t armed with resources that help them make informed decisions. But a multi-point marketing and admissions campaign that includes online resources can provide students with a comprehensive understanding of campus life without overwhelming them.
- Use your online presence to offer virtual tours, webinars, and Q&A sessions to give students a rounded view of campus life.
- Create downloadable and printable guides and checklists to help students evaluate whether an institution is the right fit.
- Host on-campus or virtual events that allow students to explore programs, meet faculty, and connect with current students.
Emphasizing Personalization in the Admissions Process
Fostering a sense of belonging is critical to helping students see themselves as creating a life on campus. Fewer than two-thirds of those who enroll in college finish with their degree. Completion rates are even lower for women, Latinx, Black, and Native American students. One of the top reasons students fail to complete the first year is a feeling that they don’t fit in. However, students who are encouraged to feel they belong in college are more likely to complete their first year.
Personalized communications and experiences can enhance student engagement and give students the information they need to assess whether a college is the right fit. The admissions process is the first opportunity colleges have to build a sense of belonging and community for students.
Admissions teams can take proactive action by tailoring outreach based on student interests and goals through personalized email campaigns. Also, hosting one-on-one meetings or small group sessions for interested students allows admissions teams to provide personalized guidance and make authentic connections. Tools like FlippedApp make personalized admissions communications easier by enabling personalized connections to help teams foster meaningful interactions.
Measuring Success and Adapting Strategies
For most students, the college decision is the biggest choice they’ve ever been responsible for. College admissions teams can help them find a perfect match with effective and efficient personalized admissions campaigns. Measuring success is a vital part of ensuring your admissions process meets the changing needs of incoming students. By tracking each part of your admissions program routinely and seeking feedback, you can identify where improvements are needed. Then, you can make the necessary changes.
Begin by tracking metrics such as enrollment yield, retention rates, and student satisfaction. If you’ve implemented new methods and tools, compare your results to the previous year to recognize improvement. Student feedback can be one of the most valuable types of information to guide your admissions process methods. Gather feedback from prospective students about how they prefer to interact with admissions teams. Seek feedback from current students to get insight into tactics that could have made their college decision easier.
This is another area where tools like FlippedApp can simplify processes. When used for measuring success, the platform can help gather relevant data on student profiles. It can also help create targeted communications to successfully gather feedback.
Making Informed Matches to Improve Outcomes for Students
The college decision has a significant impact on a student’s education and potential to enjoy the campus lifestyle. Admissions teams can play a pivotal role in helping a teen select a college that is a perfect match. By leveraging relevant data and utilizing tools to enhance personalized connections, admissions professionals can make connections with students most likely to thrive at their institution. The tools you use can play a valuable role in:
- Targeting students most likely to be a perfect match
- Personalizing communications to provide the details they need to make an informed decision
FlippedApp has the potential to help teams build targeted and effective campaigns that utilize resources more effectively and produce more accurate results by connecting with the right students. Get in touch today to learn more about how FlippedApp can help you streamline your admissions process to successfully aid students in an informed college decision.