Scannell & Kurz Enrollment Management Blog

Financial aid offices experience very tangible benefits from automated award packaging. Staff members spend less time manually calculating and entering award amounts and have more time to spend counseling students. Improving students’ (and parents’) understanding of their financial aid packages improves their ability to make informed decisions about college. There is also the benefit to the financial aid operation of reducing the errors that inevitably result from manual processes. These are significant tactical improvements in a critical enrollment function. In addition, many institutions use auto-packaging as a test exercise to estimate the impact of changes in awarding policies on the aid budget, or to understand potential losses in…Read more

If you work in the Admissions or Financial Aid office of your institution you’ve probably heard a hundred different students say, “If you could just find a way to give me a couple thousand extra dollars in scholarships, then I’d enroll.” Or perhaps something like this, “University X is offering me $16,000 in grants and you’re only offering me $15,000? Isn’t there anything you can do to match their offer?” Students and their families have become savvy consumers. Some are facing financial hardships, others are just looking to get the best deal possible, and most aren’t afraid to ask for more money. The big questions for college administrators are, “Should we offer these students a little more money?” “Will it increase …Read more

Higher education institutions love to benchmark with other institutions on a variety of factors such as faculty salaries, endowment per student, research dollars garnered, tuition charges, etc. But often institutions don’t conduct the type of benchmarking that we think is most important. Here is our top list of enrollment management benchmarking “dos” and one “don’t”: When attempting to gain an understanding of your market position through benchmarking, DO benchmark with competitors, rather than peers or aspirants. DON’T just compare yourself to competitors on sticker price—compare discount rates; “prestige measures” like test scores, U.S. News rank, and accept rates; and measures of socio-economic and ethnic diversi…Read more

When I was part of an admissions office, every day in April at 10:00 AM, you could have mistaken the tension and excitement in the office for an episode of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, brought on by the arrival of the mail bin. Enrollment deposits that arrived via phone were harkened by the ringing of a bell, and we each took guesses at what the final tally for the day would be once the web payments were counted. If we had a particularly good day, the news traveled like wildfire across campus. Wherever I went, on campus or off, if I ran into someone I knew, I would invariably be asked how the numbers looked. Anticipation was in the air, even with sophisticated data tracking and aid strategies developed through predictive modeling …Read more

Last week was office moving day for a few folks at S&K. We are hiring another research analyst, the second time in three years that the research team has expanded in order keep up with the demand for our core services, which require significant data analysis and predictive modeling. The move into “new territory” for some S&K staffers made me think of what should happen when an admissions office decides to expand into new markets/geographic territories. In preparation for our office move, there was measuring, measuring, and more measuring, all in an effort to make the move very efficient once the professional movers arrived to begin the heavy lifting. There was none of the “how does this look here?” or “do you think this will fit …Read more