Knowledge is the collection of facts and information. Sure, anyone can know things, but does a wealth of information make someone intelligent if they choose not to act on it?
Wisdom, on the other hand, goes a step further and puts knowledge into action with insight and experience.
For your school's admission office, every inquiry, application, and campus tour holds valuable insights capable of transforming your strategies and boosting enrollment numbers. The trick, though, isn’t just in collecting this data and sitting on it month after month or year after year — it's how you use it to spark real change for your school. Ultimately, your admissions data is useless if you don’t act on it.
With the right enrollment management system, admissions teams can easily transform raw data into actionable insights, making your admissions data work for you.
From collecting and analyzing the right information to adapting your approach, let’s talk about the potential of your admissions data and turn it into true enrollment wisdom.
What’s Considered Admissions Data?
Simple question, complex answer... Admissions data can be any information your school collects about prospective students and families. This data can come from different sources and includes various information that could help your school understand its families and what they're looking for in a school.
Whether it’s information gathered from an official inquiry form or a quick phone call, schools that understand more about who is applying and why will have an advantage. Anything can be considered data, including:
- Inquiry and application numbers
- Demographics
- Geographic information
- Acceptance rate
- Application drop-off points
- Interest in specific programs and personal goals
- Financial aid needs
- Admissions events registrations
- Inquiry sources
- Time to decision
- Year-over-year comparison, and more
This list goes on and on, but accurate data collection is crucial because it forms the foundation for all future decisions your school makes about its admissions strategy. If the data is incorrect, incomplete, or worse — not even tracked — it can lead to decisions that affect your school's ability to attract and engage the right-fit students.
Analyzing and Understanding the Data
The next step is to understand what all this information means. Look closely at the numbers and information you’ve collected to find patterns, trends, or insights.
- Trend Analysis: This type of analysis looks at data over time to see if there are any consistent patterns. If trend analysis shows that interest in a particular program is growing, your school might decide to offer more seats in that program or boost its marketing.
- Comparative Analysis: This involves comparing different sets of data to each other. For example, your school might find that students who attend an open house AND a shadow day are 40% more likely to apply.
- Segmentation Analysis: This type of analysis divides the data into groups based on certain criteria, like age, interests, or location, which could reveal that students from a particular region are more, or less, likely to apply.
Collecting helpful information about students' interests through a Finlasite Enrollment inquiry form, as Aspen Academy does, can help fine-tune and personalize your communications and marketing strategy going forward.
Scenario: Turning Admissions Data into Enrollment Strategy
So what do these numbers really mean in the end? Luckily, admissions and enrollment software makes the patterns and trends all that much clearer, so your school can make more informed decisions that improve its admissions strategy.
Here’s a scenario where data’s turned into action that supports your enrollment strategy:
The Data
- Your school had 55 inquiries last year who were interested in your STEM program.
- Sixteen of those inquiries registered for a campus visit, and of those registrants, 12 were accepted and 10 eventually enrolled.
- Thirty-nine did not schedule a campus visit, and of those students, 29 were accepted and 15 enrolled.
The Information
Thirty percent of your STEM scholars register for a campus visit. Your yield is 51% without a visit and 83% with a campus visit.
The Intelligence
The data shows that the yield for students who attend a campus visit is about 60% higher than for those who do not.
The Wisdom
To increase your yield of STEM scholars, you need to actively promote your campus visits. Why? The increase suggests that promoting a campus visit to students interested in STEM could be a strategic move to boost overall enrollment.
Action Steps
Great! Now what? Implementing targeted communications and special events to encourage campus visits among prospective STEM students to increase total enrollment.
- Work with your marketing team to develop ads and content that highlight the benefits and experiences of your STEM program.
- Reach out to inquiring students with personalized invitations from the science faculty for a tour of the Makerspace or science labs.
- Track the response to these initiatives and adjust the strategy based on which approaches are most effective.
Tracking and Adapting
Once your school starts using data to make decisions, it’s important to keep tracking that data to see if those decisions are working. Tracking data continuously allows you to see how effective your strategies are and make adjustments if things aren't working as expected. It also helps your school stay responsive to new trends or changes in student needs and preferences.
If data shows that certain strategies aren’t working as intended, it’s important to try new approaches. For example:
- If fewer students are enrolling after campus visits, your school might revise what happens during these visits or how they’re following up after a tour.
- If there’s a drop-off or lack of engagement after a campus visit, it might be worth considering if families find the application process too difficult.
Key Takeaway
You don’t need a math degree or even a calculator to make sense of the analytics. By setting up an enrollment system to regularly review and respond to data, your school can ensure it’s always moving in the right direction and making the best use of its resources to attract, enroll, and retain students.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Connor has spent the last decade within the field of marketing and communications, working with independent schools and colleges throughout New England. As Finalsite’s Senior Content Marketing Manager, Connor plans and executes marketing strategies and digital content across the web. A former photojournalist, he has a passion for digital media, storytelling, coffee, and creating content that connects.