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...
transfer students
Recruitment

Rise of the Transfer Student 

Transfer students were second-class citizens. Although they always had a place at regional public institutions, many private colleges and universities largely ignored them. Admissions offices were built to work with freshmen, and transfer students were messy. They brought credits that were viewed as inferior and that did not fit into...
attracting environmentally conscious students
Recruitment

Attracting Environmentally Conscious Students 

Edgewood College’s beautiful wooded campus is situated on Lake Wingra in Madison, Wisconsin, in a mixed-use neighborhood not far from the western edge of the University of Wisconsin engineering campus. The college’s neighbors include middle-income homeowners, university students and other renters, and small businesses and restaurants. “Madison is a more...
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...