• A Review of Recent College Admission Studies
• In the News: Many Trustees Feel Underprepared
• Did You Know?

A Review of Recent College Admission Studies

Now that May 1 has brought an end to most colleges' admission decisions, now is a good time to review some of the data that have emerged during the past recruiting season and ponder their implications for recruiting the Class of 2012.

"Admissions hysteria," multiple applications and first-choice attendance—With headlines like "Colleges Want to Cool the Admissions Frenzy" (NPR), "High Anxiety of Getting into College" (New York Times) and "Why Doesn't Harvard Love Me?" (Los Angeles Times), the mainstream media focused on the record number of applications and record low acceptance rates that were fueling panic among families with college-bound students. While most of these articles commendably mentioned that such selectivity only characterizes a small fraction of colleges with high rankings in publications like U.S. News & World Report, it took Education Sector's Kevin Carey to point out that not even the elite Ivy League schools are in actuality becoming more selective. As the number of high school graduates has increased 8.4 percent between 2002 and 2006, the number of Ivy League acceptance letters has increased even more, by 10.6 percent. It's only the increasing number of applications that is driving the Ivy League schools' declining acceptance rates, as students now routinely apply to at least six colleges. Meanwhile, CIRP data for Fall 2006 showed that while two-thirds of first-year students were attending their first-choice institution, half of those attending their second-choice institution had been accepted to their first-choice institution but opted not to attend. For those who are not attending their first-choice institution, concerns about financial assistance and the cost of college were cited as important factors in their selection. In contrast, those who are attending their first-choice institution cited the campus visit and the college's social offerings as more influential in the final decision.

Blogs, social networks and e-recruiting—The mainstream media, CNN and USA Today among them, also latched on to student bloggers who are sponsored by college admission offices, a growing trend given that candid, yet informed "third-party" endorsements are highly sought after by prospective students, according to a Noel-Levitz survey. But while Pew data show that 55 percent of online teens use social networking web sites like MySpace and Facebook that consist of user-generated content, fewer than 10 percent of high school students utilize these sites to gather information about colleges, according to an Eduventures study—rather, 84 percent of the students use the colleges' own web sites to research schools.

Standardized tests, score reporting behavior and conversion rates—While one college after another made the news for going "SAT optional" and the current issue of The Lawlor Review reported that 730 U.S. colleges and universities are now more or less test-optional in their admission processes, members of the ACT staff were busy analyzing student behavior in reporting their ACT scores to colleges and learning how those behaviors can be used to recruit more effectively. Their results show that conversion rates at most colleges increase significantly among students who take the ACT multiple times and report their scores to the same college more than once. Preliminary data also show that students who apply and send official scores (rather than unofficial ones on their high school transcripts) are more likely to enroll.

In the News: Many Trustees Feel Underprepared

When USA Today publicized a Chronicle of Higher Education survey of college trustees, it highlighted the finding that 40 percent felt only "slightly" or "not at all" prepared to serve in the job. Of those who felt slightly or not at all prepared, only 56 percent said they had an excellent relationship with the institution's president. In comparison to a 2005 Chronicle survey of college presidents, the trustees were more likely than the presidents to consider U.S. News & World Report rankings important, place a lower value on race and ethnicity in admissions, and place a higher value on academic measures of quality. The Chronicle's own article about the trustee survey highlighted the extent to which trustees are worried about their institutions' financial health. Only 4 percent of trustees at colleges that enroll less than 1,000 students labeled their institutions "very healthy" financially, whereas nearly one-third of trustees at colleges enrolling between 1,001 and 5,000 students considered their institutions "very healthy" financially.

Did You Know?

E-mail tops all interactive marketing channels used by U.S. marketers. Eighty-three percent do e-mail marketing, 64 percent search marketing, 38 percent behavioral targeting, and 37 percent contextual targeting.

Source: Forrester Research

Is your school communicating strategically with today's prospective students? To find out more about how to apply current research, or to have The Lawlor Group conduct an audit of your institution's communications plan, please contact us by e-mailing tlg@thelawlorgroup.com or calling 1.800.972.4345.