As an institution situated in the northeast, Quinnipiac University faces the headwinds of declining numbers of local high school students. To combat this increasingly challenging reality and maintain enrollment, their team knew they needed to focus on improving yield rates — but they were unable to confidently assess which of their applicants would ultimately show up on campus in the fall.
That’s where MARKETview was able to help. Karissa Peckham, Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid at Quinnipiac, used MARKETview’s Applicant Score to identify which students were most valuable to her institution’s yield goals. Within the MARKETview platform, each student is assigned a predictive probability of their likelihood to deposit based on numerous factors including consumer, geographic, and demographic data. These “Applicant Scores” are designed to identify likely depositors who might otherwise be difficult to single out with commonly used factors like campus visits. She described how crucial this data was for knowing which students were best to focus on.
“MARKETview Applicant Score, along with visit activity, are really helpful in determining the right students to admit.”
– Karissa Peckham
Peckham’s team uses these Applicant Scores during the admissions process, funneled by MARKETview directly into their Slate instance — allowing their counselors to easily utilize the data when deciding which students to admit, based on who’s likely to deposit down the line. It’s especially valuable for programs like Health Science, where they have a high volume of qualified applicants, with a limited number of seats. Filling these seats with high Applicant Score students allows Quinnipiac to confidently and efficiently increase their yield rates later in the cycle.
MARKETview also helps Peckham’s team efficiently scale their student outreach. Having Quinnipiac’s academic program chairs reach out to students and form 1-to-1 relationships has proven incredibly effective for them — but student pools are too large to do this for everyone. Applicant Score helps narrow down students in the middle/high range of likelihood to deposit, allowing the program chairs to contact these specific students and make the last push needed for them to yield. Peckham outlined why this population is so important.
“If we give them a little bit of extra attention, we might get them over the finish line.”
– Karissa Peckham
Without advanced enrollment data like MARKETview’s Applicant Score, institutions are forced to rely on guesswork to pick which students to invest their yield efforts in. In an enrollment environment that’s becoming incredibly budget conscious and competitive, “trusting your gut” won’t cut it. There are fewer students in the national recruitment pool each year, and institutions that know where to look along the margins are the ones that can withstand this growing pressure.
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.