Okay, But What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Roosevelt University Increases Freshman Enrollments by 70% in a Single Year

John W. Dysart
President
The Dysart Group, Inc.

Mary Hendry has earned a fine reputation in Illinois higher education. Her long career in enrollment management has been stellar and many top administrators throughout thestate and beyond owe their careers to her training and mentoring. Active involvement in professional associations over the years has provided another outlet for her to share knowledge and encourage young people new to the profession.

Mary serves currently as Vice President for Enrollment Management at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Under her leadership and with the assistance of her enrollment team, Roosevelt University has experienced unprecedented growth and improvement. Consider the following accomplishments? from 2002-2007:

? Total FTE at Roosevelt University increased by 9%.
? New FTE increased by 29%.
? New, full-time undergraduate enrollment increased by 43.8%.
? The number of students living in residence halls increased a whopping 123%.
? Mean ACT scores increased from 20.9 – 22.4.
? Average high school grade point averages jumped from 3.04 – 3.14.
? College grade point averages for new transfer students rose from 2.77 – 2.83.

Mary demonstrated an extraordinary record of accomplishment at a time when many schools in the region had been struggling due to changing demographics and increased competition.

After another record year in Fall 2007, the President and Board of Trustees decided to not only continue enrollment growth, but tasked Mary with increasing new student enrollments by at least another ten percent by Fall 2008. Anyone in enrollment management understands the difficulty of double- digit increases in a single cycle, especially coming off an historical record year! Despite years of effective recruitment, Mary sought outside counsel to assist her in the development of a plan to increase the number of new, undergraduate, full-time freshmen and transfer students for Fall 2008 by at least ten percent.

That is how I met Mary Hendry. She asked me to come in and meet with her and her enrollment team to discuss the possibilities. I had recently assisted? another University in the Chicago area achieve historical record growth.

We worked collaboratively with key members of the enrollment team to rethink nearly every aspect of the successful admission and financial aid strategies that had served Roosevelt University so well. We hoped to build on the successful tactics already in place, but also to? implement new initiatives.

The most important element in the creation of the new plan was the full participation of the talented leaders at the University. Change is not possible without the full support of the President and Dr. Charles Middleton provided the resources and moral support necessary for new approaches. We met with members of the Board of Trustees, Deans, Vice Presidents and faculty leaders to outline intended changes in order to garner their buy-in. Opportunities were provided to ask hard questions and evaluate resource investments.

Included in all discussions regarding the new plan were the chief individuals supervising the admission operation, the Assistant Vice President for Financial Aid, the enrollment data analyst and the chief student services officer. Individuals from the academic side of the house provided insight and suggestions. We found that regularly scheduled roundtable discussions resulted in the best decision-making. The benefits of getting the perspective of admissions people on financial aid policies, the ideas of student services professionals on recruitment issues and the thoughts of financial aid staff on recruitment strategies cannot be underestimated. Full participation by select faculty contributed significantly to the development of the plan. The value of systematic institutional research and real time comparative reports, history and projections proved to be extremely important.

Roosevelt University had historically generated a strong inquiry pool and customer base. Traditional travel to college fairs and visits to high schools were reduced under the new model, while new technologies were utilized to more effectively communicate with prospective students in an individualized manner. The results of this more targeted approach to securing inquiries were impressive. The size of the inquiry pool at Roosevelt University increased by 34% in a single cycle. That increase in the customer base is the largest I have ever witnessed in a single year. While I would like to attribute all of the growth to improved strategies and tactics, there is no question that the inherent quality of the institutional product played a role.

The decision was made to be much more proactive with telephone communication directed toward inquiries in order to generate applications. A telecounseling center was established for this purpose. Telephone outreach became a top priority. Communicating with both inquiries and applicants for admission occurred regularly. The University recorded nearly 90,000 telephone calls to prospective students during the course of the cycle! The bulk of these telephone calls were made by representatives in the Call Center, but admission counselors were responsible for literally thousands of them. Other communication strategies were also employed. More search names were purchased and a high tech postcard was designedand mailed with a personalized URL response mechanism. A direct mail campaign was initiated that included letters from alumni, trustees and other import ?influencers.?

Institutional scholarship and grant programs were completely consolidated and redesigned. Merit financial aid was used to recognize academic talent, but also offered strategically to encourage prospective students to apply for admission. Roosevelt University experienced extraordinary growth in the size of the full-time undergraduate application pool. Admission applications increased a staggering 61% in one year!

Admission counselors became much more focused on communicating with applicants for admission. Systematic email communication and consistent telephone outreach educated prospective students throughout the process. Students were contacted directly and often to encourage them to complete their admission folders, visit the campus and apply for financial aid. As a result, the number of decision-ready admission folders increased dramatically, the number of visits to campus soared and much more work was created for our colleagues in the Financial Aid Office.

Representatives in the Financial Aid Office were not overwhelmed by the increase in workload. They actually packaged more than twice as many students, new and returning, this year as in the last cycle. This feat was accomplished with no additional staff! Sounds unbelievable, huh?

Well, it was only possible because of the efforts of the Assistant Vice President for Financial Aid. Once presented with the task ahead, and understanding the importance of success, he totally revamped the financial aid process:

? Technology was utilized in ways previously not imagined to increase efficiency.
? Forms were eliminated, paperwork was drastically reduced and processing procedures were altered.
? Packaging strategies were changed to meet the needs of a significantly larger enrollment.

The results speak for themselves on the processing side, but intelligent adjustments to the packaging strategy provided better equity in the treatment of all students. Tighter packaging rules ensured that all forms of financial assistance would be made available to all students, regardless of the time of application. This approach supported recruitment, retention and institutional mission.

None of the success would have been possible without the benefits of extraordinary data management and analysis. New outreach mechanisms with outcome assessments,? admission and financial aid reports were created to monitor progress throughout the cycle. The Assistant Vice President for Institutional Research proved to be indispensable. Effective enrollment management is essentially a data-driven operation and the importance of accurate and timely statistics in the facilitation of informed decision-making cannot be underestimated.

The decision by Mary Hendry to consider a little outside assistance, despite her historic success and her openness to reassessing every element of what was already a successful recruitment and financial aid strategy, ultimately made a big difference at Roosevelt University. In Fall 2008, the University:

? Recorded the largest number of new students in history.? The number of new residential students increased by 44% in a single year.

? Enrolled the largest number of new, full-time undergraduate students in history.

? Increased the number of newly enrolled freshman an amazing 70% over the record class the previous year and increased the number of newly enrolled transfer students by 16%!

? Increased enrollments dramatically while maintaining academic quality and actually expanding geographic, socio-economic and ethnic diversity. ? Increased total University credits by 12%.

? Doubled the number of financial aid packages offered to students without increasing staff in the Financial Aid Office.

? Posted the largest, overall undergraduate enrollment in history.

What have you done for me lately? A GREAT DEAL!