The Gift of Time
This piece follows “Five Barriers to Yield Improvement” and focuses on the fifth barrier.
If time is the biggest challenge to improving yield, receiving time is the most significant gift.
If a student is willing to spend time with you or any member of your campus community, it should be celebrated as an incredible demonstration of interest.
There’s no shortage of thought pieces that suggest time is the currency of the 21st century, specifically Gen Z. This is true in admissions as well.
For example, the campus visit. Far too many admissions directors look at the yield rate among campus visitors and assume it means their campus visit is powerful. While it may be, the time given to you by the student is the yield driver in that situation.
So, if time is the only non-renewable resource in admissions, and a student giving time towards a college is the most telling demonstration of interest, then why are most admissions counselors shifting their outreach to the quickest, most efficient efforts?
Why would they spend time on an email to 500 sending information out instead of finding an opportunity to engage with two students taking information in?
It’s because the offering of time hasn’t sunk into admissions counselors’ mindsets.
Maybe it’s because counselors prefer to do more of the work they like to do and less of the work they don’t. (Read that as more emails, fewer phone calls)
Maybe it’s a mistaken belief that sending information out to a large group of students is more critical than taking information in from a small number.
Who knows why – but the reality is that by not pushing for more individual, time-intensive conversations with students and parents, your counselors are driving down your yield.
Your recruitment strategy has been built on a foundation of evidence, and data, with a mix of some art and theory. When you train your counseling team to appropriately value the amount of time a student spends with your institution, you’ll see yield tick up, and your recruitment strategy will be closer to achieving its full potential.
