PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF ACADEMIA
You and your daughter may have passed her on a campus tour
on the way to check out the student union restaurant offerings.
You didn’t recognize her, but she is one of those
behind-the-scenes experts who can crunch the metadata to assess the probability
of your daughter being admitted, and importantly, successfully hitting the
finish line—graduation day.
Enter the Strategic Enrollment Manager.
While you are mulling whether the school is a good fit for
your offspring—academic options, financial aid, teacher-student ratios and that
campus food--the Strategic Enrollment Manager has taken taking a much more
holistic approach.
"When applied astutely and ethically, [Strategic
Enrollment Management] recruits students for success, links them to faculty and
other mentors and helps them become college graduates and lifelong achievers,”
said Paul Orehovec, consultant and longtime enrollment management officer.
Colleges need to
balance such factors as academic program development, recruitment policies, faculty,
student-living programs with special attention on retention plans and
procedures. Indeed, the SEM is weighing
dozens and dozens of factors, from socioeconomic status to high-school
extracurricular activities to where mom and dad went to college. The enrollment team develops a strategic model
that maximizes success—not only for the incoming four-year student, but for the
stature and financial well-being of the university itself.
The SEM thrives on the concept of Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs)—Recruitment KPIs such as diversity, Retention KPIs such as probabilities
of at-risk students and Operational KPIs such as total incoming revenue and
social-media marketing expenditures.
And from the pool of potential students the SEM can parse
“market niches,”--probable nursing students or STEM (science, technology,
engineering and math) majors or Citizen
Club aspirants.
So while connecting with the regional recruiter and
financial-aid officer is crucial, also consider finding the SEM, by email at
least. Ask about the shifting number of declared majors, how the school parses
urban from rural candidates, etc. Make sure your daughter is active on social
media…Follow on Facebook and keep your profile clear of questionable activity;
include the college on her RSS Feed; download the college’s student app; follow
and be active on the university’s Twitter accounts; post an Instagram picture
from your campus tour...
Success breeds more success. Your needs as a student/parent overlap more than you think with your top school choices….Just do the math. The SEM already has.
