Strategic Use of ACT’s
Enrollment Management
Services
Presented by
Don Pitchford PhD,
Higher Education Consultant
February 26, 2009
Enrollment Management Services
•
•
•
•
•
Class Profile service
Enrollment Information Services
Educational Opportunity Services
ACT Information Management Services
Predictive Modeling
ACT Tested by State 2008
2,203
11,951
6,286
2,548
6,113
44,863
12,469
10,589
46,990
10,081
6,959
44,311
123,918
4,361
19,439
22,950
16,573
6,295
22,598
50,420
72,326
143,734
23,687
47,240
88,103
15,884
11,603
16,896
31,728
13,054
27,131
11,951
16,521
22,545
25,641
79,050
34,211
35,590
33,238
93,884
2,047
3,182
> 100,000
20,000–40,000
70,000–100,000
10,000–20,000
40,000–70,000
< 10,000
Source: WICHE: Knocking at the College Door 2/2008 - Projections of H.S. Graduates by State
1,251
8,159
14,714
986
50,225
11,602
1,527
10,740
1,503
EMS:
What We Do and Why
• ACT collects an enormous amount of
information from students and from colleges
• Our job in Enrollment Management Services
(EMS) is to translate that data into forms that
can help campuses improve student recruitment
and student retention
What We Say…
• The ACT College Report provides the most
complete and helpful information available about your
freshmen:
– Comprehensive picture of students’ needs, interests,
backgrounds, and abilities
– Is available before first advising conference
– Is easy to use and interpret
– Helps the advisor match student needs with
institutional resources
What Happens on Campuses…
• All the activities we say the ACT record can be used for
presume that all the data gets in the hands of the right
people, in the right format, at the right time!
• Because ACT data is largely unavailable to end-users,
there is a big disconnect between how we say the data
should be used and how it is actually used.
Freshman Class Profile Service
The Class Profile Service provides:
• a comprehensive summary of a college's ACT-tested
entering freshman class by showing parallel
descriptions for students who sent scores, who
enrolled, and who sent scores but did not enroll.
• In addition to making comparisons with national
enrolled freshmen, the information can be used for
enrollment planning and trend analyses.
The report contains:
*
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Executive Summary—highlights the academic characteristics of your enrolled
freshmen.
College Attractions—highlights your institution's position in the students' order of
preference (1st choice, 2nd choice, etc.) at the time of testing.
Academic Abilities—provides distributions of the ACT scale scores and high
school grades.
Goals and Aspirations—provides summaries of students' educational major
choices and their degree aspirations at the time of testing.
Plans and Special Needs—provides student-level admission/enrollment
information, needs for special programs or assistance, and financial aid
considerations.
High School Information—provides information about the students' high school
core curriculum preparation, academic background, and a list of the major feeder
high schools.
Competing Institutions—provides the names of those institutions to which score
reports were sent as well as to your institution.
Year-to-Year Trends—provides five-year trend data on such areas as ACT scores,
high school grades, family income, and special needs and interests.
The Class Profile Service can answer:
• Has the popularity of selected academic
majors changed in the last five years?
• What has been the trend in average ACT
scores in the last five years?
• What proportion of ACT-tested students who
designated our institution as their first choice
actually enrolled?
• How successful have we been in enrolling
minority students?
ACT’s Enrollment Information Services (EIS):
• EIS is a comprehensive market research tool that
assists with enrollment planning by pinpointing
the schools and geomarkets where your best
prospects can be found
• Contains the data on all ACT tested juniors and
seniors that have tested on one of the six
national dates
Strategic Enrollment Planning with EIS
EIS is a tool for more than the Admissions Office!
Use EIS campuswide to:
• Inform discussions with faculty & academic administrators about
market realities
• Provide senior management with decision-making data to drive new
enrollment initiatives
• Provide admissions counselors and other enrollment staff with
marketplace information to guide territory management
Enrollment Funnel through EIS
1.4 Million ACT-Tested Students
Campus Scores Received
(Visibility)
Breakout by:
Ability
Geography
Race/Ethnicity
Family Income
Intended major
Enrollment Preferences, etc.
Campus Enrolled
(Yield)
Market Overlap
Competitor Analysis
Best Uses for EIS:
• Manage primary markets
– Identify underperforming high schools
• Identify new markets
• Train new admissions counselors
• Help senior administrators set realistic goals
• Develop marketing messages tied to student interests
and characteristics
• Identify competing institutions for specific markets
Market Position & Competition
Use EIS to compare your institution's image and appeal within
student populations and among competing institutions
• Which institutions are receiving score reports from students in primary
market segments?
• What is your score report overlap with these institutions?
• What is the academic quality and educational major interest for these
students?
• How does the collegiate competition vary across the educational programs
you offer?
Market Segment/ Territorial Management
• EIS for underperforming school/region analysis
– Low awareness, low conversion
– High awareness, low conversion
• EIS for counselor training
• EIS for territory management
• EIS for managing competition and market overlap
• EIS for name purchases
• EIS for identifying new markets
• EIS for strategic and realistic goal-setting
• EIS for benchmarking success of initiatives
Identifying and Building Awareness in New Markets
• Identify areas (county, EIS segment, etc.) with a
concentration of students with desired characteristics
and/or characteristics that yield enrolled students
• Purchase targeted names using EOS, and send
awareness-building messages
• Do competition analysis to determine if students in target
areas are mobile and attend schools like yours
• Identify selected high schools to visit
• Use EIS data as a benchmark to identify success of
initiatives
Publication/Website Development
• Use EIS to:
– Identify target group characteristics such as income and
intended major (Overview Report)
– Identify competition and competitor markets
• Use Class Profile Report to:
– Identify strengths to promote; weaknesses to counter
– Develop lead recruiting messages
– Focus websites and print materials on student interests
and needs (departments, services, and activities to
feature)
Create Customized Queries on Demand
• Geographic variables
–
–
–
–
–
States
ACT EIS segments
High school districts
High schools
Distance from campus
• Academic performance
– GPA
– Class rank
– ACT scores
• Key characteristics
–
–
–
–
–
–
Gender
Educ. major
Race/Ethnicity
Family income
Religious pref.
College selection
variables
How to get prospective student names
• ACT
– ACT score-sender
– ACT EOS
– PLAN EOS
• On top of hundreds of other sources
Educational Opportunity Service (EOS)
• Use EIS data to effectively inform EOS purchases.
• EOS is a great tool to help you build your inquiry/prospect
pool by purchasing qualified cohorts of targeted students
that meet your desired institutional student profile.
EOS is simple!
“It provides you with a method to get the
right message, to the right students at the
right time”—some famous enrollment
manager .
Student Data in ACT Record
More than 350 fields of data provide a
complete student profile:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Personal/demographic data
Admissions/recruitment data
ACT Scores, norms, and prediction research
High school courses and grades
Educational plans, interests, and needs
Activities and accomplishments
The Problem with Electronic Data
• Last year, more than 1,000 colleges received only
electronic reporting of ACT records, totaling more than
4,600,000 scores sent
• Of the top 300 campuses (> 5,000 score reports) 87%
are electronic only
• For the great majority of these campuses, only the
ACT composite score can be loaded into student
information systems.
A Sad State of Affairs
• After 25-plus years of electronic reporting, there
is a whole generation of enrollment managers
who have never seen a paper report…
• And, most have no idea that ACT collects
significant information related to student’s
academic ability and career interests.
Key Questions Regarding SIS Vendors
• What data elements can be imported?
• What data elements can be extracted
via forms and reports?
• Can data move to/and from my CRM?
What Options Do Campuses Have for Viewing
and Sharing ACT Data?
• Market for enterprise-level student information
systems dominated by few companies:
–
–
–
–
–
–
SCT Banner
PeopleSoft
DataTel
EMAS
Hobsons EMT
Jenzabar
So… ACT Developed AIM…
• Remove barriers of access to data
• Ensure data is used as intended
• Ensure sharing of data in admissions, academic
departments, student services, and
extracurricular areas
AIM turns ACT data into information that
leads to action!
ACT assessment data
Two primary types of data
1. Cognitive data- scores, subscores, predictive
data
2. Noncognitive data- the student profile section
(SPS)
The ACT Information Manager
( AIM )software can be used to house and manipulate all
student data collected from the ACT assessment
ACT’s Predictive Modeling
• ACT’s Predictive Modeling Service offers
accurate college enrollment predictions at a
fraction of the cost of other services. Because it is
based on student-level information, ACT’s
predictive modeling data are more accurate and
less expensive than predictions based primarily
on geodemographic data.
Four Predictive Models:
• An inquiry pool model that allows an institution's entire
inquiry pool to be scored
• A model for ACT-tested score senders to the institution
• A model for names purchased through the ACT
Educational Opportunity Service (EOS)
• A model that predicts first- to second-year retention
Benefits of Predictive Modeling:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Save money on mailings
Focus recruitment travel
Segment yield strategies
Segment communications
Prioritize telecounseling
Forecast enrollments
Benchmark recruitment strategies
Come to NOLA!
Mark your calendar!
13th Annual ACT Southwest Region Conference
on College Readiness and Success
April 22-24, 2009
Le Pavillon Hotel
833 Poydras Street
New Orleans, LA 70112
Q and A
Don.Pitchford@act.org
Southwest Regional Office
Higher Education Consultant
Austin, Texas
512 345-1949