Dive Deeper with Niche: Make College Search and Selection Easy, Transparent, and Free

Hello, hello everyone, welcome. My name is Paige Dallman. I'm a client support engineer at technicians out of our Portland office.

I see that there are still folks joining.

So.

We'll let you join. Uh, welcome to this session. It is a dive deeper with niche called make college search and selection easy, transparent and free. And it is hosted by Will Patch. We have a couple of housekeeping slides, things that we always like to address just in case this is your first webinar hosted BIOS. Uh, this will be recorded and it will be made.

Available for viewing on our website. Technicians.com. There is closed captioning that you are able to enable if you so choose. It is that CC button in the top right corner of your screen. You can also enable full screen viewing by clicking those arrows that are kind of going opposite directions of one another. If you're having any audio issues, video issues, we do recommend just refreshing.

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And we see some folks posted in the chat already. Keep that going. That's a great place. Introduce yourself, say where you're from. If you have questions as well, that's a good place to post them. We will make sure that we will address those questions at the end of the session. So feel free to type them in as they come up.

And feel free as well on that chat subject. You can always turn it off if you do find it distracting by clicking those kind of conversation icon in the top right. So without further ado, I am going to turn my broadcast off and turn this over to will.

All right. Thank you, Paige. I love seeing all the all the chat going in there. I'll start off saying that I am will patch. I'm from NE Indiana. If you know where Fort Wayne is that's that's where I'm at. If you want to throw in there too, what's what's a big win yet that you've had so far this fall? Like like being able to cheer everyone on. But yeah. Gonna be talking today about three things that I'm pretty. I'm pretty passionate about and that's just making the college search and selection process.

Easy, transparent, and free. So we'll dive right in a little bit what we're going to talk about some of these student pain points or the barriers that they're facing or the things that they're having trouble with right now that we can address. What do they care about in their college search? How do you address what really matters most of them?

And then ultimately, how can you simplify the search and application process? How do you then take all these things that you know or issues and actually make them better?

If you want to get in touch with me after, there's my contact information on the right. I'll share that again at the end. But yeah, I've been here at niche for a little over three years now. My job as senior enrollment Insights leader for higher Ed is basically taking information from student surveys, from user behavior data, and just making it something that's tractable, tactical for colleges. And how do you how do you use all this information to help support students?

So that's that's really my role. Before that, I spent nine years at Manchester University here in Indiana as well.

O diving in.

What does easy, transparent, and free? Well, that is niche mission. We want to make sure that the college search is easy, transparent, free for students. In terms of what that means for you, though, easy. We just want to remove barriers, right? We want to make sure that this is something that everyone has access to. We want to make sure that the search process is transparent so the information is clear, it's consistent. Students are able to compare colleges side-by-side.

And then free. Of course, it should not cost students money to learn more about college. They should be able to do their research entirely free.

O.

I would decide to do a little bit of grading here, so I took a look at the search and inquiry process and we see that inquiring is rarely easy. I keep track as I'm secret shopping and almost no colleges have the inquiry form site wide.

You know, the majority don't even have it on their on their homepage and so that's your most common landing page. That's where students are going first when they come in from a search engine result page or they just type in your link or an e-mail. So please do not hide your inquiry forms. Another another bit in terms of making it easier, there is never a reason to ask 20 questions on inquiry form. Ask what you need to to start a conversation and then add in additional information whether that's in follow up forms or fields that you fill in.

You're having conversations with students, but make that process much easier for students by shortening it. In terms of transparency, you know, it's very clear that inquiring should provide the student with more information. So that's very transparent, I believe. And it's free, of course. I've never seen someone charged semantic inquiry, so that's, I guess bonus points there. But yeah, as far as the search process, the barrier is really and how easy it is to find the inquiry form and then receive that information.

Once we move on to the application scholarship process, we see nothing but frowny faces here. This is where it gets to be a mess.

The application process is not easy. Students say they have issues with the length of applications, the requirements, even knowing what questions mean. O I'm going to dig deeper on that just a bit. I just want to challenge anyone who's here listening to this later or seeing this now. If you say that your application is easy, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you is it really? Because what's easy for us as adults and professionals who see this, who build the forms, does not mean that it's going to be easy for kids doing this for the first time. And of course they have that.

Blood pressure of what if I make a mistake? Well, if I fill this out wrong, well, if I don't give them the answer they want. You know, you have to think through all of this.

In terms of transparency, parents and students both say they feel there's this secret process of trying to figure out how applications are evaluated, what's considered, you know, while we may say, well, we ask for these things, we're going to use them, there's just a lack of transparency in terms of what is needed and used.

And then often students have to pay to alley as well. I always ask question why should they pay to apply to find out whether or not they have the honor of paying tuition. You know, it's just another barrier for low income students. I know some people might say, but but will there's fee waivers for low income students? And. OK, but that requires the student to raise their hand, identify themselves as low income and then being able to navigate that waiver process. And students say over and over again that they're afraid of doing that. They're afraid of identifying themselves because they.

Might hurt their chance of acceptance O if instead you just made it the same for everybody, that's removing another barrier OA lot of pain points here.

We move on to the actual enrollment process. This is more of a mixed bag. You know, students are pushed to deposit shortly after being accepted, and they're definitely told how to. So then, you know, making that decision, though, that's where it gets complicated. They have to weigh all their options. They have to, you know, try and figure out what's going to be best. For me, how do I compare these two schools I've visited? You know, yes, it's a transparent process because they know that they have to pay their deposit and roll. And, you know, they're given lots of information.

About that, it's pretty straightforward after that.

But you know, it's still a challenging thing for them.

And of course, the enrollment process definitely is not free. So in addition to just paying for the college itself, you have a deposit which can be a barrier for students. They have to be able to navigate if they're taking out loans, what the loan process looks like. There's there's a lot of things in there.

O.

What are these roadblocks and pain points the students are experiencing? What are these challenges that face them? So we go back to our student surveys and site behavior in terms of inquiries. Inquiries need to be answered quickly. And the piece here that if you've heard me speak before, you know I'm going to keep hammering on.

The inquiry process and that response needs to be relevant to them. Students need to hear information that matters to them, as it doesn't have to always be applied today. Visit now, because that's not answering their question. Think about one inquiry is.

If I inquire, I am asking a question, right? I'm saying I want to learn more, and if your only response is alley visit, you're not answering my question, right?

O when I went through some of these free responses from students, I asked what do you want colleges to do better in the process? Over and over, there were variations on this response. Answer our questions.

Students just over and over saying that they ask questions and they were responded to or they they they want to be able to search for information on your website and find it.

Couldn't do it. Couldn't find the answers to their questions. This was a major pain point. Students not getting their questions they asked answered, which is very basic. I mean that's something that everyone can do a little bit better job of. Think through what students worry about. What do they wonder about? Answer those. Your inquiry response needs to answer their question.

Students want and really expect you to provide that relevant information. So talk about what matters to them and not what matters to you. You know O if your outreach is going to be all about these actions that you want them to take, and it's all process based.

You know that that's not what students want.

They want to know why they should care. Why should they be excited? So talk to them instead about the major programs, clubs, the experiences, you know, the things they care about. If you're not focusing on that, it's a poor experience for them. You're not telling them why they should care, why they should be excited. When we ask, 73% of students said that relevant information really influences their decision to enroll, and yet the majority of them did not receive relevant information from any college.

That's, I mean, this is a survey of about 21,000 students.

This is not a small sample size. These students are just not being told what matters to them.

Another thing, another main point here. Yes, students were submitting more applications, which that's a separate yield issue on the back end, right? But there were issues that prevent them from submitting more applications to the colleges that they wanted to.

They've faced these barriers along the way.

What were those? Well, 59% of students said they submitted 5 or more applications.

And 26%, so they submitted 10 or more and that's U-44 from prepandemic. And we can look at this different ways and say, well they're casting a wider net. Why is that? You know, if they're, they're just not sure where to go or they're not getting their questions answered so they're not really getting as excited and dedicated to one school. A lot of ways we could run with this. But that's just, that's just so much. 1/4 of students applying to 10 or more colleges, how many do they really feel like they know? Well, how many do they feel like they're really excited about?

I think that's much lower, but with this 37 students.

In terms of our pain points, these friction points, 37% of students said that there were things that they wanted to, they wanted to apply, but it just felt too early. They didn't feel prepared for these application deadlines early fall and that's up 28%, up from 28% in 2020.

You know, more than 1/3 of students said that these deadlines were just too early, and the majority also said there were colleges they either did not apply to at all or did not complete an application that they wanted to because of issues with that.

O let's dive into what were those issues with an application that a student said I really want to apply to that college and they start that application and they bail. If you're looking at your at your data, you should see students dropping off. They're not finishing that application.

Well.

A few good things here. 54% say they didn't apply because there was some barrier that they met the most common there. It was too expensive. They get to the application fee and they didn't feel it was worthwhile. It was too expensive for them. 22% said the applications were too long. You know if you're clicking through page after page after page, and we'll get some of some of those solutions in a little bit, 19%. So there were just too many required materials. They had to submit things that they didn't feel they should have to. 13% said that the application was too confusing.

They didn't understand the questions. They didn't understand how to respond, didn't understand the process.

You know, I think the good news here, if we can find a silver lining in this, is that all of these issues can be fixed because they're all self-imposed barriers. None of these are things that are outside of a college's control.

These are issues that are being caused by the forms themselves, by the processes themselves.

O.

Another pain point here. One of the most common that we see is all about the price and how cost is represented and understood. You know, students are more price sensitive than ever right now and that's affecting how and ultimately if they even alley or search for a college, considering where they enroll, you know, the the sticker price, the cost, the discount models is confusing, frustrating, anxiety inducing. That's a major pain point for students.

This year, 81% of students eliminated colleges from consideration solely based on that total cost before aid.

They didn't wait to see what their financial aid package was. So you can go out all day telling students about your generous financial aid, great scholarship programs, you know, all these great paid internships. But if they don't alley and they don't acquire in the 1st place because of that sticker price doesn't matter.

Right. This was also the only area that the majority of students and every income quintile said. That they do not have confidence.

You know, saying that they were not sure they could afford the college that they're enrolling at.

That's so this rice sensitivity that last year that was 73% of students, that's a big jump. Prepandemic, it was only 56 and the wealthiest students were confident that they could.

So this is a big shift. This is even more amplified when we look at underrepresented students, low income students, first generation students. So if that's sort of your base, if you're mission driven and you're increasing your tuition every year, you're just pricing out more and more students.

You know it doesn't matter what your scholarships are if they don't believe they can even apply.

In terms of what do students care most about, I mean cost and major for sure, but what else actually matters to them, right? I know everyone here, you're feeling the pressure, you want to enroll bigger classes, but I think it's important here. You have to be open and honest because you cannot be everything to everyone.

You know, you need to be able to express your community, your culture, and really build a community that these students want to be a part of. You know, get people excited to be a part of this. You know, that's that's really what's going to be your best draw.

So we look at what are the three most important community facets.

Number one and #2, diversity. That's your most important aspect of your community. And I just want to emphasize here, diversity is more than just race and ethnicity, you know? Or you have students who think differently, or you have students who are out there coming from different backgrounds. You know, that's all incorporated in what diversity is. They want diverse student bodies. They want to learn from a diverse faculty and staff.

I mean, these are very important things. Students, um other one that I keep harping on. The arts are still more important than athletics. That was a shift since the start of the pandemic, you know, 2 1/2 years ago now.

Students said that they care more about the arts on campus and those experiences than athletics.

Only about half of students said they care about the athletic fan experience and justice over a third. So they want to participate in athletics in college. And yet over 3/4 say they want a college that emphasizes the arts, whether that's, you know, their ability to participate, whether that's theater, whether that's arts just present on campus in terms of, you know, your artwork, hanging in buildings, things like that. They want to know that you care about that. They want to know that you care about that, that feature, that culture. So think about are you representing and recruiting?

For the arts the same way you are for athletics.

You know, I haven't met a lot of schools that do have the number of recruiters for the arts that they have for athletics, and yet it's affecting more students.

Ohh 62% of students said the colleges brand and name recognition influenced their enrollment decision. So they care about having a school that people recognize that people can say, oh, that's really great, I love, I love that school. I've heard good things there. Only 5% of students said that it does not matter to them at all. So building that name recognition and building that awareness are important. I mean you have to start that early. You know these awareness campaigns, while they might not drive a specific conversion action, are still in.

Important you know you need to beware. The students are actively searching, using student stories, using reviews, using these experiences to help build your brand. Use that student voice. Use that young alumni voice to really help spread your message. That's going to make a difference because they need to be able to recognize it. Not just students, but the parents as well. That's what matters.

This was a quote from one of the students in the survey. You know, this sentiment was was very, very often when I was reading through them, they said I didn't want to go to a school that nobody had heard of.

And I get that, you know, being able to say, oh, I chose to go to, I see Virginia Union there. Hi, Lauren. So if I say, hey, I'm going to Virginia Union and their friend says, oh, that's awesome. I love that school or their parents are out there saying, yeah, I really like them. Their friends are talking about how great it is. That feels good, right? That's really something that's telling them that you made the right choice. Is that subtle difference there?

But some good news here.

You know, while branding and name recognition does definitely matter, only 3% of students, they said they would not apply to a college that they had not heard of. O you can still earn their attention. You can still earn that interest. You know it's going to be a little bit harder until you have the branding campaigns and you have the awareness built up there, but it's not going to completely exclude you from application if you have a smaller brand. So that's the good news there.

You know, we see students talking about caring deeply about what they study, what student life is going to be like, you know, so you're emphasis and all of your messaging, your digital marketing, it needs to be on the programs used to be on the student life. The experience is the outcomes and that broad language, you know, where we see it all the time talking about. We have dedicated faculty, we have small classes, great jobs. You know that does not resonate with students right now.

Right, because it's so general and everybody says it.

You know, we saw over and over students saying that every college looks and sounds the same because the photography looks the same, right? The video looks the same. The way we talk about ourselves sounds the same. They want these relevant examples. They want the relevant stories. They want things that speak to what matters to them.

And on their inquiry forms, on their application, they're telling you exactly what matters, right? This is that transparency piece. They tell you exactly what they want to hear about. And yet so often they're saying that they're not getting those answers. They're not being told why they should be excited, what matters to them.

Another quote from a student here. We're at college, took the time to figure out what my interested major was and give me that information. It really stood out, and what stands out to me about this quote is the fact that stood out to the student when someone actually answered their question, right?

That shouldn't be the case, the student said. I am interested in, let's say, accounting.

If you're not going to answer that and give them information about accounting, student life within accounting, outcomes within accounting, if everything's not relevant around what they said they map that matters to them.

That's that's just a wasted come flow, right?

O instead. This should not be something that stands out to them.

Everything that they receive should speak to what they say they care about.

So the last step here, how do we, how do we simplify this process? Well, kiss, right. And before anyone types in the chat, well, that's not what it stands for. I've got kids and I tell them not to say that word. So instead it's keep it simple, superstar. That's how you keep it. That's how you simplify, you know?

First step, first thing you want to do, you need to audit all of your processes. You need to address the pain points and these these issues that I mentioned earlier.

So was this audit look like it can be super basic, right? I'll give you just the easiest thing you can do. Anyone can do this. If you have, you know, half a day, take the time to sit down and do this audit.

So think about are you asking for information at the right time?

This really starts at the inquiry phase. So when you have your inquiry form even, are you asking for things that are needed in that stage or at a later stage?

You know, if a student feels your application's too long, think about what are we asking now on this application? That we don't need to make an acceptance decision, do we? Are we asking for things that either we don't use at all?

Or are we asking things that we don't need until later? Don't ask it then.

You know, there's surely pieces that you could pick up later with conversations with shorter supplemental forms.

As long as your inquiry form can start a conversation.

That's all you need, right? You can ask later, even you know, hey, what? We want to make sure we can provide you with the most relevant information. What are some things you're interested in? Experience in college? Do you want your parents included in communication? What major are you interested in? All these things could be asked later, after you start the conversation.

Don't create barriers at the time of inquiry. Don't create super long application forms that ask things you don't need to make an admission decision.

Are you actually using what you're asking? So as you look through your application, look for the fields that aren't being used at all. Look for the fields that were likely added years ago. Nobody's thought to take a critical look at what's needed and your inquiry form. If you have things that you're not using to customize their portal, customize emails, customize SMS. If you're not using these fields, take them out. You obviously don't need them, right?

Or rebuild things. You're actually using what you have to provide a more relevant experience, but if you ask a student a question, you should be using it.

When we look at the inquiry process and we ask students about this, students we see are filling out fewer inquiry forms on college websites. But what's interesting, we took a look to see, does that carry through to niche? And it didn't. They're still generating more inquiries and that was, that was really interesting to me, that they're down one place but not another.

O we dove in a little bit there.

On college websites, in just two years, we've seen this dramatic decline in the number of inquiry forms the students said they're filling out.

This year we had 75% jump in students saying that they did not submit any inquiry forms.

They did not go to a single college and felt inquiry form that that was really surprising. So we wanted to see is that whole true on niche and did not you know nearly half of students are still adding five or more colleges?

O that, that's a that's a disconnect. You know, they're not going to the college, but they're still going elsewhere.

Was all that mean? I hope you're asking that right? What means is there's less interest in going directly to colleges to inquire, but that doesn't mean that students are any less interested in actively searching for colleges. They just want this one stop approach.

Can I compare everything all at once? Rather than going to five different college websites inquiry form and asking them for information and all they're going to do is tell me to alley and visit, right? That's where I think having a better come flow can really help you there.

Three things I think every inquiry form on your site should be. It needs to be easy to find, so put it on every page. You should have inquiry forms on every single page, because every page is essentially a landing page. Depending on what students looking for, they can wind up just about anywhere.

Needs to be short. You know what? Do you absolutely need to create a record?

And that needs to be relevant to its location. Well, I mean, there is. If a student is on your music page and they fill out an inquiry form, yours first response should be about music. If they're on the financial aid page, first response, that auto responder needs to be about the financial aid process, about scholarships, about aid, you know, speak to where the student asks for information.

You know, don't just give everyone the same generic com flow.

We see applications as this massive pain point, right? We went through, you remember all those frowny faces, but do they need to be? You know, I think you can probably guess my argument there.

I think you can be bold and justice reimagine the application process to better serve students and their needs.

One way that we're seeing this happening.

Is by completely removing barriers with direct admission.

This is where there's a huge opportunity by taking away this process of requiring students to go fill out this long form they may have already filled out part of with inquiry form and instead proactively going and saying, look, here's what we know about you. If you applied, you'd be accepted anyway, so why make you fill out that form? Why make you do all that? Instead? Let's just say Yep.

You would be admissible. Let's move forward in the process if you're interested.

O for those on the call who don't know what direct admissions is, is this focus on removing friction and the admissions process by using what's already known about students.

And about and then taking this proactive approach and that admissions decision instead going to the student and saying you know you're admissible, you could be a good fit here, you fit sort of who we're looking for.

Let's let's just move forward if you're interested.

So this is something that we started testing back in February. It's something we wanted to see can we do this and why is that? Well, I mean niche is the largest platform for school search. We have half of all college bound seniors creating profiles already there's 38 data points. You know, that's when we started looking at and talking to colleges. What we were asking was the same things they were already asking. So instead what direct emissions does is it empowers institutions to go out make these offers.

And then apply those scholarships at that initial touch point and lay new students. Know that, hey, based on your GPA, if you require test scores, based on your test scores and based off of what you're looking for, you could be a good fit here and you would be admissible if you did apply. So instead, would you like to move forward and be admitted? So what this does is it just moves that student ahead. It's great because it can reach out to students who might be a good fit. So if you're like me, I worked at a small.

College, you know, there were students looking at our peers who didn't know us really yet, but would be a good fit if we could just go out and say, look, if you applied, you would be admissible. Here's the scholarship you would receive. Are you interested?

And then they can move forward, rather than waiting for them to find us, waiting for them to then go through our nurture campaigns, hopefully they alley, and then they wait and they get their scholarship. It just takes all these steps out. It removes these pain points for students.

O with direct admissions, what does this look like in this case? Let's say we're talking about Jordan. Jordan meets your institutional profile. Let's say that you have, you know, we are interested in students with a 3.5 and above. You know, if you want to be really restrictive, we want 3.5 and above. And these majors, you know, we, we have students like that. The students then who match that criteria will be offered acceptance on your behalf proactively and then ultimately receive those.

Ships and aid. They then of course would have to submit their transcripts and documentation for verification of that. But then they would move forward and they would say, well, I discovered this great college, it is more affordable than I thought. This might be a good fit for me, you know, it's taking that extra step.

O visually, you know, looking here on the left.

What this does is it locks enrollments early these students who might not know who you are.

Let's get in front of them early, convert these students who could be a really good fit for you, and then ultimately help them enroll. It's saving time. It's saving budget because you don't have to go through the whole nurture campaign, right? You're finding students who might not have found you anyway, and now you're bringing them in in the middle here.

You know, it helps you get a whole get ahead of enrollment deadlines. You know when students are talking about the deadlines, feel too early if you can instead go out to them and not make them. Remember to fill it out after soccer practice, after homework. After all that, you're engaging these students who are the best fit for you.

They're on the right.

What does niche has this brand that students trust? When we've talked to students in this follow, and we did this research with the direct admissions process, students said that they opened the emails initially because they trusted niche because that's where they were going for their college search. If they just got yet another college e-mail, they wouldn't have opened.

But instead they got something that's out of the norm and they opened it. They were interested, you know, they said they wanted to move forward and ultimately found a good fit for them.

O this was one of the quotes from the students when we started interviewing them afterwards. You know, the student said I was over the moon when I saw the e-mail. I was so happy, so shocked. I'd be offered something like that. It was just the best feeling in the world. This was something that this student wasn't sure she was going to go to college, found a college she hadn't considered before, and she's now enrolled there.

We did this pilot project starting in February, so it's late in the cycle already, but we had 18 students enroll at a college. You know that if you could have 18 extra students in the spring, that was amazing. We saw a record-breaking e-mail open rates because the students trusted those emails. Because I can tell you I'm doing secret shopping right now if you get a dozen emails from colleges a day already.

One more is just going to be noise, but instead this stood out to them and they actually opened it. They were interested and they moved forward in the process.

OK.

If we have questions about improving the search and real own process thoughts there, add them in the chat. We'll get to those in a little bit. We can have a discussion. We had a question submit in advance as well we'll get to, but just want to make sure that that we can have that discussion at the end.

A little bit about niche if if those of you who haven't heard of us before. We're the largest platform for preschool through grad school. Search O in your minds, undergrad and grad just on the college side, over 27 million students, families using it each year for comparing colleges, building their list, figuring out where they want to visit, apply, and then ultimately enroll.

Things that we do, you know, we we work with students and families to help find colleges and then ultimately they can opt in to be contacted by colleges, either colleges on their list or colleges similar to those. So it just helps make the funnel more efficient there, help expand our reach through digital marketing. We do a lot of data analysis work as well. If you want to learn more about the direct admissions piece specifically, that's niche dot BZ slash direct admissions, that's a new piece that we're in the process of adding something we just went through.

Starting fall, we're expanding it to a little larger group this fall. I think we are at.

In the 10 to 15 range, we're going to keep growing that. We've just recently opened it up. So it's it's something that students were excited about, the colleges we worked with and the pilot were excited about. So we're going to keep growing that.

One last thing, on November 10th, if you want to if you like the research, you like the data. I'll be talking about some of the results from our class of 2023 fall senior survey on November 10th. You can catch up with that and everything else at the niche dot biz slash newsletter once a month. Put out our latest blog posts, upcoming events, all that you can find, all of our research, all the blog entries over at Niche dot BZ Slash insights. Those are all the quick links to get there.

We had one question submitted advance, there's another one I'll be following U on, but what are some best practices?

What are some of the current trends on building inquiry and search portals, and then how does niche connect with all that? I want to say I haven't done research specifically on all this, so I don't think I can say for sure. Here's a best practice. I can tell you what we should be doing to provide the relevance.

Um, you know.

I think overall, if we want to be very broad, focusing on the right message at the right time, O's going out to the inquiries and really speaking to them about what matters for the stage they're at. It's going to be most importantly, you know, for the prospects, don't tell them to apply. Get them excited first, get them converted 1st and then start talking about those high actions.

In terms of just the the portals themselves, I recommend using content blocks to really feature visit events based on the interest and location of the student.

O if you have specific major days or college days, you know, having those resented to the students that they matter to most, that's going to be your best bet. You know, you might want to put just virtual events for students who are further away that you might not need to highlight someone 10 miles down the road, and then using your grad year to highlight events that might be either geared towards seniors or geared specifically for underclass students.

I think having counselor blocks with links to book, call or chat with them, great way to get in front and help build that name recognition with their counselor. So when they get e-mail from them they say, Oh yeah, I remember that person you know having blocks with major interest extracurriculars using blocks with rotating facts about campus. A great example of this on their homepage. I've always loved this College of the Atlantic has a a really nice home page. They have just quick facts on there. They have content blocks that really make it feeling feel much more engaging.

I think really having dynamic content blocks for student stories or videos based on the location, the major, the extracurricular interest that the student says they have, so that way you can connect them with stories, they're really going to matter, most of them.

I think if you have religious life opportunities varying that based on what the student says their religion is, you know that could be a way to help build that affinity as well. For high GPA, students providing content blocks for honors programs, things like that. Great way.

Excuse me?

Great way to get in front of them with that relevant information as well, O hope that answers that.

Definitely stay connected if you want to reach out, have any questions specifically about anything from today, you want to follow up with me. You can find all the research, all the all the assets, that niche insights. But yeah, if any other questions, I'll happily take those.

Hmm.

Yeah.

And we totally acknowledge too. If you're like me, you might be digesting all this data, wonderful data and information that will was presenting on and need to noodle on it before asking some questions. Lauren, this webinar is recorded and you can access it at our website technicians.com.

Yeah, I think that I want to say too, there will be an audio version for people for that way on the Enrollment Insights Podcast feed. We'll have that out as well.

OK.

Well, we did have a question. Just pop in from Claire. How do you stay specific and relevant without constructing ad two different communication streams?

Uh, the?

I mean the time investment is worth it. That's that's what I'll say there. The the more you can use these dynamic content blocks where you, you don't have to necessarily completely rebuild everything. You know that might be one thing you can check into but then.

So.

Yes, it is a lot more work. I mean I have to acknowledge that. So start small, start in chunks. I really recommend first you know if you can build one flow just or one even e-mail specific to each major. That is an awesome starting point. If you can't do that, instead think about clusters. So think about maybe you have departments or things like that, you know.

That's something that that can really be helpful. You know, start with these bigger chunks and keep chopping down, keep optimizing that way. But yeah, it is going to be a lot more work. I mean that's where if you, the more people you have who are writers who can help do this. You know, you probably from your marketing departments or Claire, I don't know maybe you are the marketing department. The the more people you have who are writing this because you have assets on your website already, you have assets from marketing campaigns already, you can use some of these.

Really.

Sweet, sweet.

I mean this is not, this is not something that I say lightly, but yes, it is a big time commitment. But yes, the outcomes are absolutely worth it. You're going to see higher conversion rates, higher click through rates. Students are going to be more excited because you're speaking to what matters to them instead of just telling them to visit instead of just telling them, well, we have small class sizes and and you should love us because we're, you know, La La la no, tell them the stories that matter most.

Yeah.

Love it. Another question come in from came in from Michelle regarding direct admission. Do students have any negative feelings about this in regards to a school selectivity and overall brand?

That did not come UA single time in our follow-ups with students. They they did not care. That's something, you know?

Yeah.

The people who want colleges to be selective, AKA rejective, are not the people who are applying to your colleges, and those are your alumni. That may be your board.

You know, closing doors is not what students look forward to. They don't want to say, oh, I want to go to a college that's likely going to reject me. No, they they that's not what they care about. They want an easier process. They want to be able to go to a college they can afford. And by giving them the scholarship at the time of acceptance and by going out to them and saying, look, you're a 4.0 student. You know, you fit the criteria. You have the majors that we're interested in. You know, why should you waste your time applying to 20 colleges? You're going to get in wherever you want if you're a 4.0 student, right. So.

That's where you can reach out to students instead and take that proactive approach. And they were just, they loved it.

The students liked this approach. Not a single interview in their follow-ups came up with a student saying, yeah, it just didn't feel as as selective to me. It just didn't feel as special because they wanted me. And that's really what it is. It's this proactive recruitment saying we want you to be on campus, right?

So I think that is, I mean that's absolutely I, I hope, you know, I hope that that you don't, you don't take this as me, you know, shutting you down on that at all. But I mean it's something that isn't legitimate concern, right, because that's something that the president's going to ask, that's something the board's going to ask, right.

But it's not something that the students and the parents care about. They want to know can I go to college? Do they have my major? Can I get a job? You know, that's that's what really is going to matter.

Yeah.

Ah, I love it. We have more questions coming in. Jennifer was asking will your team be following the first piloted programs to track if the enrolled direct admin stayed at the school and graduated?

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah.

Perfect, short and sweet.

Peggy also had a question with direct admissions. How many acceptance notifications does the average student receive?

Well, with the pilot we just piloted it with two schools, so they couldn't get more than two there, but there wasn't going to be overlap with those two even, you know.

The, the college itself defines who they're looking for, where they're looking for what programs. So it's not this broad like you wouldn't come in and say, well, I'll just take anybody and everybody you know, it's not going to be that type of thing. So yeah, I mean it depends on the student, it depends on which colleges are are doing, it depends on which colleges are who they're looking for. But yeah, I mean it's going to depend a little bit on that and the student can then later on say, I don't want to hear from colleges. I've kind of made-up my mind and can change that.

Reference and they wouldn't keep receiving all day.

Perfect.

Any other folks on the call have any questions? Again, feel free type them in the chat. At the very least, I would recommend taking a screenshot of or at least writing down Will's e-mail in case you do have further questions. Again, feel free reach out to him. I'm sure he is very, very eager to answer those.

Yeah.

Um, Ohh last one here. Michelle, what plans do we have? Do you have with moving the directed mission from a pilot?

Yeah, so it has moved out of pilot phase this fall. We've been registering more, more colleges to it. That's something that we've already moved out and we're sending it up now. It's sort of a can we hire fast enough to keep expanding it with the with the entrance colleges have in it.

All right. Oh, I love it. Jennifer, will you deliver more results information from the 2nd and future pilot programs?

Yep.

Yeah, I mean that's, I mean we, we are big on data. If you've read the enrollment inside the log, you'll see all the research and all that. Yeah, we're going to keep tracking this. In fact with the program there's weekly check INS between our team and the college. So it's very, very high touch.

Perfect.

I'll give it a minute.

See if anything else pops up.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Alright, well, thank you so, so much will. This has been wonderful information that I'm sure people will continue to think about throughout the rest of today especially. Thank you everyone who showed up live to engage and listen in on this. And for everyone who's listening to this via a recording, we look forward to seeing you at one of the next webinars. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Great. Thank you.