Admission: Four Tips on Increasing Yield for Acceptances

Admission: Plan Now to Increase your Yield on Acceptances March decisions are right around the corner, and Admission Directors can take a few steps right now to ensure the highest possible enrollment yield from acceptances.

1. Involve your school’s program directors. Everyone has a stake in the yield success for acceptances. Whether it’s the Academic Dean or the Music Director, the Debate Coach or the Soccer Coach—all program directors can help the yield cause at large and impact their programs. Plan an early February meeting of all program directors—before end of term madness takes hold and March break arrives-- to discuss strategies for getting them in touch with accepted students (and/or parents) who have expressed a strong interest in specific programs.
2. Plan or refine your accepted student special events now. Whether it is a full-day visitation program for accepted students or an evening reception for the kids and their parents, you don’t want to wait until mid-February to create or refine these plans. Successful schools enlist an all-star cast of teachers and administrators, as well as current students and parents, to assist in these critically important events. They need to plan. So do applicants and their parents who need to save a date should they be accepted. Send out an e-blast to your applicants about special events and follow up visit programs for accepted students, and get the info on your website well before admission notifications are sent.
3. Use your admission software to anticipate and (later) track likelihood of yield for an acceptance. Sure, in many cases you just won’t have a strong sense of whether a candidate will enroll after an acceptance, but your best guess on likelihood for yield is better than no guess as you enter admission committee meetings. And you will find that tracking the real data after acceptances and comparing it to your intuition will help inform your committee discussions and yield efforts in the future.
4. Consider adding to your acceptance letters alerts for school events or news, and include a link for these to your website. You may have your winter musical right at acceptance time, an end of season playoff game, an art exhibition, or a special speaker at your school. Perhaps you are at the point where you can announce an exciting program that will launch in the coming year. These are all terrific opportunities to get soon-to-be accepted candidates and families back to campus or at least to keep them thinking about you without any “sales” pressure.

Creating or refining a yield plan for your acceptances at least six weeks before decisions are mailed will ease stress, involve the entire school team, and keep applicant families informed and excited until they sign that contract and send in the deposit!

Fred McGaughan is a 30-year independent school admission and marketing professional. He is Managing Director for Gowan Group, an educational consulting firm that specializes in Strategic Enrollment Management.

Three Tips on Managing Parents' Responses to Admission "Deny" Decisions

For those of us in the secondary school admission world, March means decision letters, and of course with it comes the inevitable--sometimes emotional-- responses from parents regarding “Deny” letters. These conversations can be difficult, especially when we are dealing with the parents of an enrolled sibling or any family with whom we have developed a strong bond during the admission process. Here are some tips on how to navigate the tough ones:

1. For deny decisions for a sibling, consider making a phone call to the candidate’s parents in advance of your letter mailings or electronic notifications. While these conversations can naturally be a bit awkward, the parents will respect you for it and appreciate your personal touch. You are letting them know that they are family.
2. For all candidates and their parents, do not allow them to press you for specific details regarding an admission deny decision. There are simply too many moving parts to an admission committee decision, and pointing to one or two specific reasons for the denial will compromise the confidential aspects of your committee’s work. A firm statement (delivered with a soft touch) such as, “It was a difficult decision, but we had a very competitive pool of applicants this year” is the best way to go.
3. You will often be pressed by parents to prescribe ways that their child’s application in the future will result in an acceptance. Don’t go there. While you understandably want to soften the blow after a deny decision, there are too many moving parts and unknowns in the coming year, and you will be inferring to the parents that a few improvements will in fact increase chances for this child's future acceptance.

I’m reminded of a difficult Deny decision in my early years as an Admission Director: The parent pressed for the reason, and I wanted to be helpful. I agreed that the student’s testing was in line with our averages, his report card was quite good, and his interview was strong. The parent immediately went to the child’s teachers and bullied them about their “weak teacher recommendations”! In sum, Admission Directors and staffs should always be warm and caring, but when it comes to Deny decisions, it is far better to avoid specific reasons because you want to bring closure to the situation and protect the integrity and highly confidential nature of admission decisions. Parents have an agenda--to push as hard as possible for their child. Your agenda in Admission is to be firm-yet-kind in advancing your school with mission-appropriate acceptances that will define the school’s culture and support its programs.

Fred McGaughan is a 30-year independent school admission and marketing professional. He is the Managing Director of Gowan Group, an educational consulting firm that specializes in Strategic Enrollment Management. http://www.thegowangroup.com

Approach Branding like it’s a 500- Word Theme

Fred McGaughan, Gowan Group 1/6/15

As an English major and former teacher, now a branding professional, I’m struck by the similarities between savvy strategic branding and positioning and the old 500-word theme. In middle school, high school, or college, you may have found expository writing to be a chore, but love it or hate it, the 500-word theme remains a wonderful model for strategic thinking. And the application of that disciplined approach to writing holds some uncanny similarities to your branding.

Think about it: In sophomore year, you had just read The Great Gatsby, and you had a 500-word theme due in one week. A daunting proposition for any student, right? But your English teacher had spent most of the first marking period stressing that a step-by-step strategy would lead you to a. Do some close re-reading b. Brainstorm with impunity to get all your ideas down on paper c. Organize your thoughts to look for trends and “Ah-Hah!” topics d. Decide on a thesis statement that is important, compelling, and original e. Stick to that message with two or three topic sentences and f. Support each topic sentence with two or three supporting statements or quotations. Voila! Now you had a message of interest for your reader, an outline--a path to follow as you polished up your phrasing, sought your “grabber” opening line, and developed a conclusion. With this disciplined approach, in a short two and one half pages you had something clear, original, intriguing, and memorable to say.

It’s easy to see the similarities between this disciplined approach to theme writing and your branding and marketing. There are so many moving parts and so many things to say, but you don’t want to move forward without a. Conducting research to test your assumptions of who you are and what you do best (close reading) b. Gathering leadership and key stakeholders to hold candid, free-ranging discussions about current and emerging issues (brainstorming) c. Analyzing the plethora of information (organizing and looking for trends) d. Creating important, original, and sticky mission and vision statements (thesis) e. Affirming those statements with at least two or three of your signature program elements (topic sentences) and f. Drilling down with specific examples that irrefutably buttress your claims (supporting evidence).

Huzzah! By taking this disciplined approach to your branding, you and your “reading” audience now have a much better understanding of your brand. You’ll still need that “grabber” (tag line) and a compelling conclusion (delivery on your promises), but your teacher (Board Chair, President, Head) just might just upgrade you from a C+ to an A by the end of the term (praise and raise).

To learn more about Fred, our Managing Director, please visit our site at www.thegowangroup.com.