IHE article: Admissions Continue through the Summer for Some Colleges

[polly_mer]

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/07/15/noncompetitive-colleges-search-students-continues

The discussion in the comments regarding branding for these non-selective, practically indistinguishable institutions still working on fall admissions numbers is intriguing.

How's your institution looking?  Anyone being drafted to call prospective students to get them to sign on the line which is dotted?

[marshwiggle]

From the article:

Cazenovia is a four-year private college that admits between 70 and 80 percent of those who apply. For colleges like Cazenovia, this means telling reporters and others not to pay too much attention to the roughly 2,500 students who apply each year. Most of them are admitted but won't attend.

and later

Now, the university is three short of the 775 it was supposed to enroll in the fall

70 to 80 percent of 2500 is 1750-2000. 775 is 44% of 1750 and 39% of 2000.

So about 40% of students that are accepted actually enroll. In Ontario, student list universities* as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice, and institutions have statistics indicating that, say 95% of people will take their 1st choice if accepted, 30% will take their 2nd choice, and 5% will take their 3rd choice. (Made up numbers, but that's the idea) Do any of these places have that kind of information? If students are making shotgun applications to zillions of places then that makes a lot of uncertainty.

(*Actually, since students are applying to specific programs at a university, different choices could even be different programs in the same institution.)

[downer]

I thought that is basically the default at most places. Maybe selective places are able to finish most of their enrollment by the end of the Spring, but the great majority of places I see keep on enrolling up through the first week of the semester. Then some have late start programs to enroll even more.

[glowdart]

We look to transfers & full-pay waitlist students to deal with balancing off the summer melt. This is what we have always done. We make our class in the spring, but the budgeting still includes a certain number of assumed summer admits to offset melt.

Like downer, I've assumed this was typical. Our summer admit  is some other place's melt and vice versa.

[Hibush]

From the article:


70 to 80 percent of 2500 is 1750-2000. 775 is 44% of 1750 and 39% of 2000.

So about 40% of students that are accepted actually enroll.

I am impressed with offices that can hit their targets when the yield is 40% or less. If students are applying to half a dozen schools like Cazenovia, that number is common or even high.

There is no room to admit more if you want to raise the number. Increasing applications is tough if you are already well known in the area you draw from.

On the other side, having a bit too effective a campaign to enroll the admitted students could have the school renting the local hotel for the fall semester.

[polly_mer]

From the article:

Cazenovia is a four-year private college that admits between 70 and 80 percent of those who apply. For colleges like Cazenovia, this means telling reporters and others not to pay too much attention to the roughly 2,500 students who apply each year. Most of them are admitted but won't attend.

and later

Now, the university is three short of the 775 it was supposed to enroll in the fall

These are two different institutions.  Frostburg has an enrollment target of 775, not Cazenovia.

[marshwiggle]

From the article:

Cazenovia is a four-year private college that admits between 70 and 80 percent of those who apply. For colleges like Cazenovia, this means telling reporters and others not to pay too much attention to the roughly 2,500 students who apply each year. Most of them are admitted but won't attend.

and later

Now, the university is three short of the 775 it was supposed to enroll in the fall

These are two different institutions.  Frostburg has an enrollment target of 775, not Cazenovia.

Doh! I lose my "reading for comprehension" points.

[polly_mer]

From the article:

Cazenovia is a four-year private college that admits between 70 and 80 percent of those who apply. For colleges like Cazenovia, this means telling reporters and others not to pay too much attention to the roughly 2,500 students who apply each year. Most of them are admitted but won't attend.

and later

Now, the university is three short of the 775 it was supposed to enroll in the fall

These are two different institutions.  Frostburg has an enrollment target of 775, not Cazenovia.

Doh! I lose my "reading for comprehension" points.

It stood out to me because I know how big both Cazenovia (about 1000 total students) and Frostburg (about 5000 total students) are.

Thus, if we do the math, Cazenovia looks even worse with 2500 applications * 0.80 admitted=2000 admitted.  250 attending/2000 admitted is 13% yield.  We can fiddle around, but yield is staying pretty low.  Cazenovia has the problem of being a pricey-enough small private in a region with lots of good choices for all kinds of students.  Frostburg has the advantage of being a regional comprehensive in the University of Maryland system that is welcoming to the inner-city Baltimore and DC students in price and admissions policy.

[mythbuster]

Here at Compass point state, it's all about how many transfers we let in. In a moment of being overly truthful, an admin here once referred to it as "back filling" to get to the enrollment number we want. Which is why none of faculty actually believe the stats handed out about the SAT scores and GPAs of our students. They only run those numbers on the students admitted traditionally, but there is not accounting at all for all that back fill!

[marshwiggle]

Here at Compass point state, it's all about how many transfers we let in. In a moment of being overly truthful, an admin here once referred to it as "back filling" to get to the enrollment number we want. Which is why none of faculty actually believe the stats handed out about the SAT scores and GPAs of our students. They only run those numbers on the students admitted traditionally, but there is not accounting at all for all that back fill!

One thing that I know has been mentioned before; the average in any lab or lecture section added late to handle people who register late will be lower than the average of other sections, as a result of this. (Also, there'll be more assignments not handed in, more attendance issues, etc.)

[SLAC_Prof]

I thought that is basically the default at most places. Maybe selective places are able to finish most of their enrollment by the end of the Spring, but the great majority of places I see keep on enrolling up through the first week of the semester.

Exactly-- I've spent the last 20+ years at the same SLAC and we've always continued enrollment work through the summer. Some of that is transfers, but there are always students who decided the financial end didn't work for them but whom later change their minds, or students who go off to orientation at State U and hate it, or students who for whatever reason didn't make a decision in May. In years when we have an enrollment shortfall lots of extra effort goes into that continued work, but even when we've been at surplus there's still been a continuing recruitment process because the marginal cost of adding another student is lower than the new tuition revenue they generate. As a department chair I meet with families throughout the summer, always have.  I'd long assumed that only highly selective schools that are turning students away in large numbers had the luxury of closing the door after May 1. Recruiting at my school never stops, and we're no different from any of our peers with which I'm familiar (in our case, SLACs ranked between roughly #50-#75 nationally).