College Admissions Experience
Recruitment

Tailoring the Admissions Experience 

I remember that when I started my first job as an admissions counselor, one of the interview questions was, “Do you see the role of admissions counselors more as counseling or as sales?” I had no experience, so I really didn’t know the right answer. Since the word “counselor” was...
retention, graduation, success
Marketing, Retention

The Flywheel of Retention 

After sagging for several years, our four- and six-year graduation rates ticked upward in 2015. Our fall-to-spring retention rate was up roughly two points, and our preliminary fall-to-fall rate followed suit. The number of students on probation dropped by about one-quarter. All these improvements are having an impact on our...
moving beyond majors
Program Development

Moving Beyond Majors 

As I sat looking at data for the newly enrolled students in our incoming class, comparing it with institutional and national SAT data, I wondered, is the concept of a major becoming obsolete? Our colleges and universities are built around them. For generations, faculty have been training in one discipline...