Throughout the summer, sharp enrollment teams have been carefully measuring melt rates to help determine what their ultimate entering class numbers will look like. The challenge most teams face in trying to gauge this vital metric is knowing whether their melt rate is competitive overall — and if it’s competitive with the students who matter most for hitting their enrollment goals.
When examining real-time melt data from almost 200 colleges in MARKETview as of July 21, we can see that this year’s melt season is complex. Over half of all schools are tracking melt rates higher than last year, and much of the data reveals a melt landscape different from what you might expect.
Across all MARKETview partners, withdrawn deposits are up 8.7% year over year (YOY), and melt rate is up 0.3 percentage points (pp).
One might expect that international student melt could be the primary driving factor in these increases, but the data shows that’s not the case. While the international student melt rate is up this year (0.4 pp), this is not dramatically different than domestic melt rate which is up 0.3 pp.
Within the domestic data, it’s surprising that melt has accelerated the most with Public institutions and Top 50 National institutions. Both cohorts are seeing a 1.0 pp increase in melt rate this year.
Next, we need to understand why this is happening. Thankfully, MARKETview has the data to help understand the cause — and pinpoint the exact groups of students that are most frequently melting. This allows enrollment teams to do more than just observe melt; they can take data-informed action to actively manage it.
A clear contributor to this year’s increase in melt is a substantial jump in students admitted off wait lists. Among Top 50 National institutions, we’re seeing a 26% lift in wait list admits. MARKETview partners had access to this data as it was happening — which gave them more confidence in making the right moves to insulate their campuses against the potential pitfalls of late admit activity.
When we delve deeper into the data, we can see that the Public institutions’ melt struggles this year fall squarely with in-state students. In-state melt rate is up 1.1 pp, while out-of-state melt rate is only up 0.2 pp.
What’s most surprising is that it’s with the most affluent students (as measured by household-level consumer income over $500k) where Public institutions have seen the largest increase with in-state melt rate (1.4 pp). In fact, this melt rate is not only seeing the largest year-over-year increase, but also a markedly higher melt rate (8.2%) than we see for families with household consumer income below $100k (6.5%).
This data illustrates just how quickly the enrollment space is changing — and the risks of relying on just your own campus data to help navigate your way to success. Against this complex and rapidly changing landscape, MARKETview partners have the benefit of real-time, comparative data to help them make the right moves at the right time. MARKETview also equips front-line teams with tools like our proprietary Melt Score, which is custom built for each partner college to identify individual students with high melt risk to help mitigate melt before it happens. The only thing for certain in these uncertain times is that knowing more about the students in your pool gives you a tangible advantage.
Chat with our team to see how MARKETview’s real-time data can keep you in the know throughout the enrollment cycle on the student populations that matter most to your goals.