Your School's Most Valuable, Least Used Asset

American colleges and universities have been admitting, educating, and graduating students for 385 years. There are roughly 100 million college graduates in America today and cumulatively, they represent the roadmap for success at each of the thousands of schools they attended. They are the literal models for success sought by every current and future student.

So why is it that the US college search and admissions process does not systematically integrate these models into how we find, match, and enroll new students? If we can determine how to succeed in each school’s unique learning and social culture, why are we not using that information to enroll new students who share a desire for these exact same conditions? Why aren't we using graduates to create more graduates?

Modern data science gives us this power. With a surprisingly small slice of recent alumni data, a school can define which parts of its culture and values - in and out of the classroom - were most important to its graduates. When this data is applied to prospective new student profiles, it very quickly becomes apparent which people in the pool do (and do not) value these conditions most. This empowers enrollment teams to focus their time and money where it has the highest probability of creating not just great freshmen and transfers, but also engaged future alumni.

Some, more affluent schools use similar data mining techniques today to predict a range of enrollment patterns. Crafted by expensive consultants and guarded behind ivy walls, they no doubt help inform offers and drive yield, but they are not visible to students and are invariably focused on who will come, not who will stay. By building this data on a much lower cost, 2-sided platform that is equally visible to students and schools, and by shifting the success horizon from enrollment to graduation, individual student and school outcomes improve immediately, even as the entire system modernizes and improves.

This outcome based, community led approach also allows schools to find and build more diversity. When you know exactly which social and academic conditions drive persistence and graduation at your school, you can confidently recruit in new markets. And just as importantly, diverse groups of new students can more easily and vividly see themselves in your culture. 

Since that first American college class enrolled at Harvard in 1637, we have used a surprisingly similar enrollment process. It is time to add to our toolset, increase our transparency, and shift our focus from enrolling classes to building high value, lifelong learning relationships that serve both students and the schools they love.