Joy Rather Than Anxiety: A New College Application Paradigm?

In a December, 2021, blog, Jenny Rickard, President and CEO of Common App, stated that its goal is to create “a college admissions process that sparks joy rather than anxiety.” For those students applying to the most highly selective colleges, and for those whose financial aid awards will ultimately determine if, or where, they matriculate, that goal, while admirable, is probably not attainable. An analogy, perhaps, would be to suggest that students and alumni of a lower-seeded NCAA March Madness basketball team could, prior to and during the game, watch with no anxiety – only joy. Highly unlikely! Whether the Common App goal, joy rather than anxiety, is relevant for all students is debatable, but it could be more broadly defined to include a second cohort: colleges’ Enrollment staffs.

By James Johnston, Ed.D. — July 19, 2022

Tags: Admissions, Application

Joy Rather Than Anxiety: A New College Application Paradigm?

In a December, 2021, blog, Jenny Rickard, President and CEO of Common App, stated that its goal is to create “a college admissions process that sparks joy rather than anxiety.”

For those students applying to the most highly selective colleges, and for those whose financial aid awards will ultimately determine if, or where, they matriculate, that goal, while admirable, is probably not attainable.

An analogy, perhaps, would be to suggest that students and alumni of a lower-seeded NCAA March Madness basketball team could, prior to and during the game, watch with no anxiety — only joy. Highly unlikely!

Whether the Common App goal, joy rather than anxiety, is relevant for all students is debatable, but it could be more broadly defined to include a second cohort: colleges’ Enrollment staffs.

Anecdotally, Enrollment officers and their staff are suffering unprecedented anxiety and stress, ironically caused in part by Common App’s ability to enable students to easily apply to a large number of colleges. Enrollment stress? Try having a record number of applications — and absolutely no idea of your “yield”; i.e., the percentage of those admits who actually matriculate. Throw in the fact that your VP Finance depends upon those matriculants’ tuition dollars to, basically, keep the college afloat? Lee Trevino, a famous professional golfer who was raised in poverty, years ago said that the definition of pressure was lining up a four-foot putt at a public golf course with a fifty-dollar bet riding on it — and having only thirty dollars in your pocket. Enrollment heads probably would add their own circumstances as another example.

The Enrollment Paradigm

For many years, colleges followed the false narrative that, since they were not businesses, sound management, finance, and marketing practices were not necessary. Phillip Kotler, the widely-respected “Father of Non-Profit Marketing” from Northwestern University, published “Strategies for Introducing Marketing into Non-Profit Organizations” in 1979, but Admissions offices generally avoided adopting proven marketing techniques for (a) lack of basic expertise, and/or (b) fear of internal (e.g., faculty) or peer institution objections.

However, competition, demographics, weak economies, and expanding institutional goals combined to put Admissions staffs in a difficult position: how to enhance — or at least maintain — student enrollment, quality, and tuition revenue? As a result, senior college executives, particularly presidents and CFO’s , began to ask more from Admissions staff than simply making “Admit/Reject” decisions. Those staff, in turn, recognized that, to succeed, they must “be more, and do more.”

Turning to corporate examples, Admissions offices became Enrollment offices and embraced basic Marketing concepts, including:

The Enrollment “Funnel”

Marketing principles recognize an activity “funnel”. The rubric will vary a bit, but for college admissions, generally it consists of, in descending order:

Awareness
Interest
Application
Admission
Matriculation

These five steps are designed to comb the universe of potential applicants, get as many as possible to apply, admit the qualified cohort, and persuade them to matriculate. The “melt” from the top of the funnel, Awareness, to the final step, Matriculation, is huge.

Enrollment consulting firms proliferated, frequently specializing in specific aspects of the funnel. Advice from multiple consultants was sometimes totally contradictory: concentrate on deeper penetration of your normal recruiting area; spend more recruiting dollars on expanding your recruiting area. Increase your mailing; decrease your mailings and concentrate on social media. Each consulting firm seemed to have its supporters (perhaps to justify the expense) — and its detractors.

Disruptions

Harvard professor Clayton Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation” in the late 1990’s. Its original meaning has been broadened to include breakthrough concepts that can change a product, process, or industry. In the Enrollment world, several disruptive innovations have occurred to alter the enrollment process, including:

Discounting tuition
Common App
College Board Search
Social Media/online applications
Simplified applications

Of those innovations, the widespread use of discounting tuition as a marketing technique is perhaps the most disruptive. John Synodinos, Lebanon Valley College’s 15th President (1988-1996), arguably was the first college leader to initiate tuition discounting as a marketing tool. Establishing “Presidential Scholarships”, Lebanon Valley offered non-need discounts of up to 50% off full tuition for any applicant in the top 30% of his/her high school class. The offer worked, although in part due to a factor John didn’t emphasize: it got students and their parents to actually visit the campus — and they discovered a rural, pretty, inviting environment.

Other Enrollment officers took note, and the practice proliferated. Private colleges, not constrained by the need to use public funding exclusively for need-based aid, realized that, without regard to federally derived Expected Family Contribution (EFC) figures, they could offer students and their families as little or as much as the Enrollment office (which now included both Admissions and Financial Aid functions) deemed necessary to secure the student’s matriculation.

From those early days of using financial aid; i.e., discounting, as a marketing tool, this year at private colleges the average first year, full-time student has tuition discounted more than 50%. And the number grows every year.

College, particularly small, less selective, private colleges with few other revenue sources (return on endowments, research contracts, annual giving, etc.) may well reach a point of no return, but it hasn’t happened yet. Discounting has become the most powerful marketing tool in the Enrollment officer’s bag.

At the Margins

While the previously mentioned disruptors, particularly discounting, have had a large impact on shaping the size and nature of the typical student body, small increases at the margins could be sufficient to heal college enrollments and finances. For example, an increase of two percent in a typical private liberal arts institution’s applicant pool, yield, and retention rates, accompanied by a two percent decrease in its discount rate? The school’s enrollment and financial woes would disappear.

Is there a new disruptive innovation that could, at the margin, be colleges’ solution? Yes.

Restructuring the “Funnel”

Enrollment offices spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money creating Awareness — and creating, maintaining, and/or enhancing institutional “Brand” — and Interest. But here’s where the “melt” is most acute: converting Interest to Application. Why so much melt?

More desirable alternatives. The potential matriculant, prior to applying, simply didn’t find the school sufficiently appealing or found other(s) more so.
By insisting on receiving an application and making an admit decision prior to fully explaining its offer (financial aid, dorm options, major field choice, etc.) - the school/student dialogue never occurred.
Inertia. But is inertia exacerbated by not knowing the outcome; i.e., the admit decision?
Uncertainty/ Anxiety/ Stress. Back to Jenny Rickard of Common App: let’s find a way to make the admissions process be joyous, or at least less anxious.

An apparently radical solution — but not really that radical for many colleges: restructure the “funnel”.

Before	After
Awareness	Awareness
Interest	Interest
Application	Admit
Admit	Application
Matriculate	Matriculate

Why?

Here’s an overwhelming benefit: by giving students an actual admit decision, prior to applying, anxiety may be replaced by Joy — and positive feelings about that college. It is reasonable to expect, then, that a larger number of “Interest” students will now actually complete the application process. A larger pool of “Admits” should lead to a larger number of “Matrics”.

Furthermore, it’s already been Beta tested.

The Common App Experiment

Common App recently piloted a “direct admission” program. A group of students who had provided Common App information, but had not completed applications to college(s), were offered admissions to one of three HBCU member institutions, prior to applying. The results? According to Common App, students who received a pre-application admission letter “were four times more likely to submit an application to the institution that offered the direct admission.” Furthermore, 12% of the students who had not previously submitted an application enrolled at the direct admission college!

If fear of “prestige” is an issue, i.e., how would this be viewed by our peers, applicants and families, recognize that the Ivies with their “Likely Admit” letter, essentially have been doing this for several years.

To be effective, a college must have:

Sufficient student academic performance and career/major interest to make a decision.
A high current admit to applicant ratio.
Resources to adequately pursue each pre-admission candidate.

In Summary

If an institution, after putting students through the application process, admits the large majority anyhow — what is the point of insisting on an application prior to admitting students, when the final result is already determined? Put in a different way, what’s the point of deliberately eliminating a significant number of students at the “Interest” — “Application” juncture of the funnel?

SAGE Scholars’ Role

At absolutely no cost to participating member colleges, families, or students, we at SAGE Scholars can provide significant academic and personal student data through our “FastTrak Profile” program, and we can be a student — college administrative intermediary. SAGE Scholars, member college, and students/families have the same goal: promote quality, affordable, private college educations to as many folks as possible.

James Johnston, Ed.D.

Dr. Johnston is the founder and architect of SAGE Scholars, Inc. A visionary leader in the field of higher education, he works closely with the leaders of private collegiate institutions to make their values oriented educational programs more available and more affordable to families and their children. He developed Tuition Rewards, a college savings plan, in partnership with the member institutions and benefit providers.

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