5 Steps to Help Admissions Officers Meet Enrollment Goals

how to equip admissions officers for enrollment goals

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First things first: there is no one-size-fits-all solution to achieving your enrollment goals. Anyone who says there’s a way to effortlessly stuff your enrollment pipeline is likely misleading you. 

Every school is different. The higher-ed industry is evolving so rapidly that strategies and tactics change constantly, to keep up with the interests and demands of students and their parents. 

Many online guides will focus on first impressions and how to grab the attention of prospective students. Your team deserves better. Most students who apply to your school have a shortlist of schools they were interested in long before their first contact with your institution. Whether they were long-time sports fans, or the latest generation in a long line of previous students, the work of encouraging them to accept your offer letter began years before your first email.

That being said, there are some proven strategies and steps you can take to grow your enrollment with repeatable success. We did the legwork in refining everything down into five simple steps. 

How can I help my admissions officers meet enrollment goals?

Break down your enrollment goals into actionable steps, provide coaching for your admissions officers, expand your school’s digital footprint, focus on the end of the pre-decision process and perform ongoing research to help admissions officers meet enrollment goals.

Step 1: Break down your enrollment goal into actionable steps

This is a familiar step to anyone who has ever set high-level enrollment goals. For your admissions officers, achieving enrollment goals means more than simply breaking down the numbers into “number of calls made and emails sent per day”.

Identify what changes in each step of your process will have the biggest impact. Simply hiring more people or requiring more hours in the office is an outdated, expensive strategy that isn’t proven to work. 

During this planning process, you might discover that simple changes will result in higher or lower enrollment numbers, without an increase in mailers, phone calls or emails. By analyzing these changes, you will be able to get a detailed action plan of what to do and when. Without this breakdown, even with the best tools and employees, you’ll operate far below your enrollment potential.

Step 2: Provide the training your officers need to meet those goals

At this point, you’ve broken down your goals into tactics and strategies you can implement into your enrollment plan.

Here’s the next question to ask: do your admissions officers have the skills, tools and training to meet expectations?

There are plenty of admissions rep training courses, with in-house options. But just like any other industry, university enrollment is unique. Industry-agnostic enrollment coaching will fall short of your needs. That’s why we recommend coaching and enrollment tracking through software designed specifically around the admissions process. These programs use automated software to map your admission advisors’ competencies and connect them with pathways to improvement — helping them improve conversation rates.

Step 3: Expand your school’s digital footprint

Now that your team has the training and the tools they need, make sure they can compete on a level playing field with other admissions departments.

Did you know that an overwhelming majority of student applicants don’t trust the information on a university’s website? Instead, they seek information from sources like review sites, friends and social media. If your only presence online is your university website, you’ll be fighting a losing battle no matter how well-trained your admissions officers are.

Younger generations know how to read the subtext of professional websites. They gravitate toward short-form videos instead of long-form articles. They consume media on mobile devices instead of desktop platforms. They can recognize when they’re being “funneled” or manipulated online, and almost no students will fill out a contact form on a university website.

Give your admissions team options to share videos on different channels and platforms. Set up pages for your school on every appropriate site where you might interact with potential students. Be proactive in responding to negative and positive reviews online. Any content you create for your school is another arrow in the quiver of your admissions officers they can use to grab the attention of a new student.

Step 4: Focus on the end of the pre-decision process

You have the trained people, the content, the goal and the budget — but you can’t buy more time. The first day of school is fast approaching, which means you can’t possibly spread your attention equally across every step of the process. Intuition would suggest that you focus the most time and effort on that step which has the greatest impact on admission rates.

Which step is that?

Pre-decision: the step that parents and students take right before submitting applications. This is when they dive deep into detailed research on ranking sites, visit the campus and investigate specifics about their potential program. Most applicants will have your university on their list before they began their search, and will not be hearing about your institution for the first time on Google. Don’t focus on a good first impression, because that will be outside of your control. Instead, dedicate your time to making your school shine on comparison lists, blogs and tours.

Step 5: Research, research, research

It’s very unlikely you’re the only admissions officer to read this list and implement these changes. Other schools will try to beat you to the punch and even incorporate other strategies. How can you be sure you stand out? Conduct detailed research during and after the admissions process.

Your admissions officers will be hungry to know where they can improve and what they’re doing well. If you aren’t already, you should begin asking applicants what they liked and didn’t like about the process. Was there anything they particularly liked about the experience or their interaction with your school? If they ended up declining your offer, why?

So, where to begin?

If you have a clear enrollment goal for the next school year, then you need to set your admissions officers up with the best tools in the industry.

EnableU provides a platform that helps your admissions officers pattern outreach strategies after your team’s best performers. AI Enablement Mapping, one-on-one coaching and KPI dashboards help to implement a framework that helps all Admissions reps like you improve their outreach and track their progress toward individual and collective enrollment goals. Learn more about our enablement services and connect with our Solutions team to get started today.

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