THE BOX MODEL

Of all the assertions I make when criticizing the Enrollment Funnel, I get the most arguments over the one I’m most convinced is true:

Contact does NOT measure interest.

I believe this is true for 3 reasons:

#1 Addition = Subtraction

Let’s pretend we add points to a hypothetical "interest" score for every point of contact a student has with your office.

See the graphic: this has the same net result as subtracting points from students who do not contact you.

Is that fair?  Let’s think about the reasons I might not contact you.

Maybe I didn’t contact you because I’ve known since I was 12 that I would apply to your school.

Or maybe I’m a first-generation student who didn’t know you counted contact in my favor.

Or maybe I wasn’t taught how to show interest in ways you recognize.  For example, you might not know that I stayed overnight with a friend on campus, and I might not think to mention it on my application.

#2 Interests Change

But even if we pretend addition works, there’s still no guarantee my interest won’t change later.

Maybe I’m religious (and a criminal; see below) and one day, after 50 positive conversations and 50 points in my favor, I think to check whether or not your school has a chapel.  Let’s say it doesn’t, and that’s important enough to me that I discard you from my short list.

Another example: when I was researching colleges, I hadn’t yet decided whether I wanted to major in English or computer science.  When I finally chose computer science, half my school relationships ended overnight, despite whatever scores existed in their systems.

#3 More Means Less

Theoretically, we don’t just measure interest so we can segment prospects.  We also do it to understand how a student feels about our institution relative to any others (at least that’s the case if we use interest scores to predict enrollment potential during application review).

In other words, if a student has a high score in your system—and assuming you think that number is accurate—then you have to accept the shaky proposition that their corresponding interest scores at other schools are low.

But you’re smarter than that.  If a parent calls your school 10 times to ask about your pre-med program, she’s probably calling every other school 10 times about the same thing.

And when a student’s interest scores look the same at every school, that number becomes meaningless as any kind of predictor.

Correlation is the Cause

All that said, I do know there exists a correlation between contact and interest.  I’ve seen the data.

But I’ve also seen data showing very clearly that a city’s crime rate will go up as the number of churches increases.  It’s an absolute fact.

That still doesn’t mean religion has anything to do with crime.  The crime rate goes up and the number of churches increases because population increases.

Really…

The fact that contact and interest tend to increase over time means absolutely nothing concrete for prospect segmentation or deposit prediction.

Do you agree?  Add your comments.