Webinar: Social Media - An Overlooked Opportunity to Boost Enrollment Yield
SightLine founder is hosting a webinar featuring MeetYourClass on November 7th, 2024.
Admissions and enrollment teams across the country are currently focused on growing their admit pool with high affinity students by increasing awareness of their institution. From the student perspective, it isn't only about awareness, but more importantly about connection and community.
Career Services - One of the Most Important Enrollment Drivers
When universities invest in retention, career services, and student employment, they create a cycle of success. Higher retention rates, improved graduation rates, and strong career outcomes all contribute to a positive institutional reputation. This, in turn, attracts new students, improves alumni engagement, and strengthens overall enrollment numbers. This is a particularly important investment for smaller private institutions to be making for the longevity of their institution.
SightLine’s Top Five Tips for Mid-Funnel Conversion
In the past few months, we have seen a lot of higher ed leaders scrambling to look at new enrollment and communications solutions throughout the student funnel. Across the board, the goal is to increase enrollment without sacrificing discount rates, overall revenue over four years, or the caliber of the incoming class. At SightLine we are focusing on the best strategies to improve on mid-funnel conversion of the highest quality students who are interested in your institution. We have five strategies to focus on this year.
Are Panicked Enrollment Managers Focusing on the Wrong Funnel Stage?
Higher education institutions are facing a daunting challenge: the enrollment cliff. With fewer potential students on the horizon, many enrollment managers are under pressure to maintain or increase enrollment numbers. However, in their quest to fill seats, are they focusing too much on attracting new prospects at the top of the funnel and neglecting the crucial task of converting quality leads into enrolled students?
How Younger Generations View Education and Career Paths Differently
As we usher in the next wave of future leaders and learners, Generation Alpha, born between 2010 and 2025, is poised to redefine the landscape of higher education and career paths. Growing up in an era marked by rapid technological advancements and societal changes, Gen Alpha exhibits unique perspectives on education and career choices. In this article, we will delve into how Gen Alpha views higher education, contemplates potential career paths, and evaluates their options in ways distinct from prior generations.
Recent Featured Guest: College Viability Podcast
Podcast Guest! This Week In College Viability (TWICV) provides content and commentary on the financial health and viability of private and public colleges in the United States. Gary Stocker fills the role of unofficial fiduciary for students, their families, faculty, staff, and other college stakeholders.
Financial Aid Optimization Analysis Reveals Increased Student Price Sensitivity Year over Year
Each year, SightLine uses student application, financial aid, demographic, and census level data to optimize new scholarship offers for the following enrollment cycle with our university customers. During this process, we compare student enrollment behavior from the most recently completed enrollment cycle to the prior enrollment cycle. Earlier this year we analyzed the fall 2023 enrollment outcomes in comparison to fall 2022 enrollment and most of our findings were consistent across all our customers, indicating changing market conditions.
Apply Learnings from Retention Programs to Enroll Students, Reduce Debt, and Propel Careers
In a world where public perception of higher education is at an all-time low we need a revamp of the value that we provide to students, and how we engage with and communicate that value to students earlier in the student lifecycle. One approach is to apply what we have learned in student support and retention services to the realm of enrollment and recruitment.
The Emotional Versus Analytical Decision Process for College Enrollment
In our last article, we talked about the evolving higher ed market. And as a data science company, of course a lot of our perspective on this comes from the data we work with every day. We analyze institutional, IPEDS and the College Scorecard data to understand the changing market. But often times this aggregated data doesn’t capture the full picture. Gasp!
Embracing Change: A Summer of Reflection for University Leaders
As universities navigate the aftermath of the FAFSA debacle, confront ongoing campus closures, and brace for the acceleration of the enrollment cliff, this summer marks a pivotal moment for reflection and reevaluation among university leaders. It is a time to re-strategize and contemplate the long-term value of your institution and the services you offer to students. SightLine offers solutions and strategies, backed by data.
Enrollment Leaders – If You Aren’t Considering Retention, You’re Doing it Wrong
Scholarships play a vital role in attracting talented students to universities, but their impact extends far beyond enrollment numbers and new net student revenue. For universities, considering student retention when optimizing scholarships is not just about ensuring a stable student population; it's about fostering a supportive environment that promotes student success, enhances institutional reputation, and ultimately boosts long-term revenue.
Four Strategies to Combat the Demographic Cliff
The landscape of higher education is evolving rapidly, with universities facing challenges such as the student demographic cliff, declining enrollment, increasing student price sensitivity, and having less information on student caliber with fewer students taking the SAT and ACT. To navigate these challenges successfully, institutions must adopt strategic and data-driven approaches that focus on long-term outcomes and impact. Here are four analytical strategies that we recommend for universities to combat these issues.
Seven Higher Ed Marketing Strategies for Reaching Gen Z
As Gen Z, and very soon Gen Alpha students, are contemplating their options for higher education, marketers and educators are faced with the challenge of understanding and engaging with these tech-savvy and digitally connected generations. Unlike their predecessors, they characterized by a deep integration of technology into their daily lives and a more critical approach to evaluating the return on investment from higher education.
Navigating Enrollment Uncertainty: FAFSA Delays and Innovative Solutions
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is a critical indicator of enrollment trends, making these delays particularly challenging for colleges and universities trying to plan for the upcoming academic year. To address these challenges, innovative solutions are emerging.
SightLine Partners with Social Media Company for Prospective Students– MeetYourClass
We're thrilled to unveil an exciting new partnership between two trailblazing entities in the education space: Sightline, a forward-thinking predictive analytics company with a steadfast commitment to improving education access and affordability, and MeetYourClass, a dynamic social media platform meticulously designed by GenZ students, for GenZ students.
Targeting Supplemental Aid During the Spring to Boost Fall Enrollment
As the VP of Enrollment or Director of Financial Aid, you may gain a better idea of the size and caliber of your incoming student class as the enrollment season progresses. At this time of year (spring through early summer) you may feel pretty confident about application progress and the number of deposits your institution is receiving, but there is always room to improve. On the other hand, your institution may be tracking a little behind expectations. But it is not too late to make some targeted adjustments to get back on track or even exceed enrollment goals.
The Impact of Tuition Resets
During Fall 2022, enrollment declined by 1.1% compared to Fall 2021 enrollment numbers. This is closer to the pre-pandemic enrollment declines that were expected, although these results were certainly not desired. First year freshman enrollment declined in all four-year sectors ranging from highly selective private institutions to public flagship universities. This continual decline has led more colleges and universities than ever to consider or implement a price freeze or a complete tuition reset.
How Colleges Can Boost Enrollment with Smarter Financial Aid Strategies
Many colleges and universities struggle to communicate the value of their academic programs to students and families. This can be attributed to not quantifying and promoting return on investment, student price sensitivity, and overly complicated cost and scholarship structures. SightLine and Meadow partner to address affordability concerns and value concerns to enroll more students.
How the Student Voice Can Inform University Brand
College students have many different day-to-day experiences ranging from interactions with professors, to doing their laundry in residence halls. Hopefully most experiences are positive, but inevitably there will be some negative experiences that can leave lasting impressions on college life in general. It is important for higher ed leaders to understand the perceptions and experiences, both good and bad, of college students to better serve them.
Navigating the Storm: Economic Cycles and Demographic Cliffs
Higher education is facing a perfect storm, as various economic factors, demographic shifts, and institutional challenges converge to create a complex landscape for colleges and universities. In this article, we will explore the dynamics of the converging economic cycles, the impending student demographic cliff, and the resulting enrollment and tuition pricing crisis in higher education.