Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education
Enrollment Management Conference
ACT Executive Update
Everything you have always wanted to know about ACT’s
Assessments and Enrollment Management Services!
Sue Wheeler, P-16 Programs and Services
Don Pitchford, Consultant for Assessment Services
The ACT test…
• When was the ACT first administered?
• In how many states is the ACT administered?
• In how many states do more than 50 percent of high
school graduates take the ACT?
• What are the top five states in numbers of ACT-tested
high school graduates?
• At what U.S. colleges and universities are ACT scores
accepted?
• What is the highest possible ACT score?
• Can students with disabilities take the ACT?
• Can students take the ACT outside the 50 United States?
• How many fees waivers does ACT offer to students?
Oklahoma Facts 2010
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28,343 graduates took the ACT.
73 percent of graduates took the ACT.
41,477 10th-grade students took PLAN®.
42,640 8th-grade students took EXPLORE®.
There is no change in the 2010 Oklahoma
ACT Composite score compared to the class
of 2009—20.7
• The Oklahoma graduating class of 2010
participated in the ACT at record numbers,
increasing participation by 1289 students over
last year.
• In 2010, 153,829 score reports were sent to
Oklahoma postsecondary institutions.
• Student achievement and success is greater for
students who take all ACT College and Career
Readiness Assessments — EXPLORE
(8th/9th), PLAN (the pre-ACT in 10th), and the
ACT (11th/12th).
• Oklahoma students who tested only once with
the ACT are more likely to have waited until
their senior year to test.
• 163,000 COMPASS® units were purchased by
Oklahoma postsecondary institutions during a
12-month period ending August 31, 2010.
Oklahoma postsecondary institutions use
COMPASS for student course placement and
diagnostic testing.
ACT-Tested Graduates by State
2010
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
92,615
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
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
ACT Academic Data
• ACT Scores, Norms and Percentiles
(42 items)
• Prediction Research (30 items)
• HS Grades and Courses (80 items)
Student Profile Data
• Admission/Enrollment Information
(10 items)
• Factors Influencing College Choice
(12 items)
• Educational Plans, Interests, & Needs
(8 items)
• Special Educational Needs, Interests,
and Goals (21 items)
• Interest Inventory (22 items)
Student Profile Data (cont.)
• High School Information (20 items)
• Financial Aid (4 items)
• Out-of-Class Accomplishments
(62 items)
• High School Activities/ College Extracurricular
Plans (32 items)
• Evaluation of HS Experience
(11 items)
• Background (6 items)
College Success Data
• ACT Scores, Norms, Percentiles
(42 items)
• Prediction Research (30 items)
• HS Grades and Courses (80 items)
• Educational Plans, Interests, & Needs
(8 items)
• Special Educational Needs, Interests,
and Goals (21 items)
• Interest Inventory (22 items)
• College Extracurricular Plans (32 items)
The College Selection Process
• Students often don’t choose to enroll at a
specific college until relatively late in the
process
• BUT fairly early in the process they make their
decisions on key questions
College Selection Decision Questions
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Do I want to enroll public or private?
Two-year or four-year?
Do I want a large or small institution?
Will I be living on campus?
Am I willing to go out-of-state?
Am I willing to travel far from home (more than
150 miles)?
• How selective an institution do I want?
The “Box”
• Students put a “box” around their decision in
terms of what is preferable or likely
• AND students are likely to choose a school
that fits within their pre-defined box
• In other words, their decisions are much
more purposeful and predictable than many
educators assume
To assist with student characteristics and
choices:
ACT offers dynamic and information-rich
tools to help you meet your enrollment
management goals!
Enrollment Management Services
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Class Profile service
Enrollment Information Service
Educational Opportunity Services
ACT Information Manager
Predictive Modeling
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
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 endusers, 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 ACTtested 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.
• And, this report is provided by ACT at no charge
Class Profile
• 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.
Continued:
• 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
• Easy to install CD format
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
1.6 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:
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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
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/ Territory Management
• underperforming school/region analysis
– Low awareness, low conversion
– High awareness, low conversion
• counselor training
• territory management
• managing competition and market overlap
• name purchases
• identifying new markets
• strategic and realistic goal-setting
• benchmarking 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
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States
ACT EIS segments
High school districts
High schools
Distance from campus
• Academic performance
– GPA
– Class rank
– ACT scores
• Key characteristics
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Gender
Educ. major
Race/Ethnicity
Family income
Religious pref.
College selection
variables
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 awarenessbuilding 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
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 .
ACT EOS and PLAN EOS
• ACT EOS
– Juniors and seniors
– More than 900,000 names per year
• PLAN EOS
– Sophomores
– More than 670,000 names per year
• Students with e-mail address (PLAN 65%)
(ACT 74%)
Student Data in ACT Record
More than 350 fields of data provide a
complete student profile:
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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
Challenges of 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 is loaded into student information
systems.
• 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:
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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, sub scores, 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 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:
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Save money on mailings
Focus recruitment travel
Segment yield strategies
Segment communications
Prioritize telecounseling
Forecast enrollments
Benchmark recruitment strategies
Student Readiness Inventory (SRI) provides
noncognitive information about your students
and productive interventions to help them
succeed.
Why the SRI?
Six-year graduation rates average 57% at 4-year
institutions (range = 36 to 75%, Horn & Nevill,
2006) and 34% at 2-year institutions (range not
available, Swail, 2004)
Many new students are ill-prepared to meet the
hurdles they face upon entry into college.
What can institutions do to help students succeed?
Prediction of Success
Historically, prediction of first-year college success has
centered on standardized achievement and high school GPA
There is growing evidence that academic success behaviors
should be modeled with additional relevant attributes,
including psychosocial factors (Le et al., 2005; Peterson et
al., 2006)
Introduction to SRI (cont.)
Psychosocial and study skill factors can be organized into
3 broad domains:
Motivation & Skills
– Personal characteristics that help students to succeed
academically by focusing and maintaining energies on goaldirected activities.
Social engagement
– Interpersonal factors that influence students’ successful
integration into their environment.
Self-regulation
– Cognitive and affective processes used to monitor, regulate,
and control behavior related to learning.
SRI Scales
Domain
SRI Scale
Motivation & Skills
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Social Engagement
 Social Activity
 Social Connection
Self-Regulation
 Academic Self-Confidence
 Steadiness
Academic Discipline
Commitment to College
General Determination
Goal Striving
Study Skills
Communication Skills
Measuring Risk
• The SRI also includes predictive indices
(based on a combination of SRI scales +
achievement information):
– Academic Success Index: likelihood of GPA 2.0 or
higher
– Retention Index: likelihood of returning second year
• All SRI scores (scales and indices) are presented
as percentile scores (range 1 to 99)
Low ACT score (composite = 14)
Student A
LOW ACT
Student B
LOW MOTIVATION
Scale
HIGH MOTIVATION
Percentile
Percentile
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0
6
95
General Determination
17
72
Goal Striving
13
80
9
51
Study Skills
47
59
Communication Skills
34
99
Social Connection
76
49
Social Activity
9
83
Academic Self-Confidence
2
46
Steadiness
6
71
Academic Discipline
Commitment to College
Low
SRI Indices
Outcome
Medium
High
Academic = 1
Retention = 3
First-year GPA = 1.5
Fall 07 status = dropped out
10
20
Low
30
40
50
Medium
60
70
80
90
100
High
Academic = 20
Retention = 17
First-year GPA = 2.22
Fall 07 status = still
enrolled
Implications (cont.)
Institution-wide initiatives designed to impact student
success include several key elements:
– Provide early identification of at-risk students
– Use multiple sources of information to identify
students (e.g., achievement and placement
scores, SRI results, faculty referrals)
– Refer identified students to resources and
interventions
– Use a “whole student” approach for service
delivery
– Track student progress and outcomes
15th Annual ACT Southwest Region
Postsecondary Student Success Conference
Omni La Mansion Del Rio-On the Riverwalk
San Antonio, Texas
April 6-8, 2011
Thank you!
ACT Southwest Region
8701 N MoPac Expressway, Suite 200
Austin, Texas 78759
512 320-1850
don.pitchford@act.org
sue.wheeler@act.org