Secret #3 - Paying Attention to Enrollment Yield Can Pay Big Dividends

What is enrollment yield? It is the ratio of the number of students who enroll at a college to the number of students who were accepted at a school.

 

Take the example of Hiram University in Ohio. Most have never heard of it, but it is an excellent school. If you are interested in pre-med, they are one of the most successful colleges in the nation at getting their graduates into medical school. They were also featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives.”

 

But Hiram has a problem. If you live in Ohio, you know about them; if you live in the mid-west you might know about them. But like the thousands of excellent small to mid-sized private colleges throughout the mid-west and east coast, there are simply too many of them to be to known/remembered. They have a brand recognition problem. This is why their enrollment yield is under 30%, which means that they have to accept 10 students to get 3 students to enroll. Does this have anything to do with the quality of Hiram? No. Hiram is a great college. So why does this matter?

 

How does Hiram persuade a student to come to Hiram instead of one of the other schools on the student’s list? You got it, money. Schools with low enrollment yields are more likely to give scholarships because they have to in order to convince students to come! The opposite is also true too. Schools like University of Washington doesn't have to discount tuition to convince a student to choose them; University of Washington has over 20,000 applicants per year and there are families outside the state of Washington that are offering to pay out-of-state tuition to attend there! The same is true at top level schools like Harvard or Yale where the enrollment yield is 80% and higher. Schools like Harvard and Yale, whose endowments are in the tens of billions of dollars, could afford to charge nothing for undergraduate tuition and do so indefinitely. They charge because they can.

 

The first three secrets should have opened your eyes to how college admissions and financial aid actually works. However it is just scratching the surface—there is much more to it than that!


With the next four secrets let’s focus on what you can do differently to maximize your chances of getting scholarships.

 

Ask yourself, what do I need to win? What is my EFC? Can it be any lower and how will I fund it. Ask yourself, what does my student need to win? What colleges might be the best prospects for me student. Where will he get in, get scholarships at and graduate on time. Ask yourself, what does my family need to win? 

 

And finally, ask yourself, how can I afford not to schedule an initial consultation. It is free and there is no obligation.  Click the button on the right to schedule it today. 

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