THE BOX MODEL

Exit Opportunities

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Before going into detail on how to use the model to develop recruitment initiatives, I want to re-emphasize an important earlier point: we must always guard against our desire to inflate cohorts by setting easy or inaccurate transition criteria.  Under no circumstances do you want students in your model who do not want to be there.  Medium-cohort prospects who only demonstrate the qualities of early inquiries leads to wasted resources, and you do not want students identified as high-cohort if they never intend to apply to your institution.

Recall that the funnel encourages us to make short-term trade-offs that increase response or conversion rates at the expense of an incoming class that does not match our enrollment goals.  Use this model to do the opposite, to discard students as soon as possible who will never complete their application or deposit. This advice runs counter to institutional efforts to improve national list rankings, which typically factor in application counts.  But discarding students who will never complete will improve your completion rates, increase your selectivity, improve school relations, and help to ensure long-term retention.  This model is meant to provide a long-term benefit to institutions.

You may even want to consider giving prospects an easy way to notify you when they are no longer interested in your institution, something more explicit than a “communication preferences” or “opt out” link in your e-mails.  Perhaps a link that says simply, “I am no longer interested in your university.”  For low- or medium-cohort prospects, you could respond with a “we’re sorry to hear that” message.  But for high-cohort prospects, this would be a clear indication that something has gone wrong, something the model did not predict.  For a high-cohort prospect, clicking that link should generate a notice to the student’s admission counselor to follow up with a phone call to find out what happened.

After all, like any prospect, even high-cohort students can change their commitment to your institution.  Perhaps, after submitting his test scores junior year (one of our sample criteria for T2), a student decides he no longer wants to pursue biology but is instead interested in nursing.  He re-evaluates his shortlist and discovers that you do not have a nursing program, so he as discarded your institution.

It is up to you to either acknowledge the poor fit and to wish him well or to convince him there really are options worth pursuing at your school.  Maybe you do not have a nursing program because your pre-med curriculum is so strong that 90% of your graduates interested in nursing go on to their first-choice schools.  This is something you can only communicate in a personal conversation, and only if you provided your prospects with a way to notify you when their commitment changes.

By keeping your cohorts clean, you will be able to focus your limited resources on relationships with students who have genuine interest in and value to your institution.  As we will see, having accurate cohorts opens up many more recruitment possibilities not otherwise available.

Next: Using the New Model