Silent No More Find Out Why They Didn’t Choose You
Yes, of course you do when it comes to the ones that got away. Nonmatriculating students are one of the most important audiences for college and university admissions operations. You’ve made the investment to get them this far in the recruitment process, and for whatever reason (more oftenreasons) they have elected to pass on your institution for another. Too frequently, these students slip away without a sound and the colleges and universities that lost them never get quantifiable, useful information regarding why.
If you’re interested in gathering this type of feedback in a systematic way, here are a few things to keep in mind.
- Choose your sample: This is fairly straightforward for smaller colleges and universities—use the entire population as your base. For larger institutions, there are opportunities for more focused assessment. While you could conduct a random sample of the entire pool, for budget or time constraints, you may choose to focus on an important sub-set. For example, you may wish to concentrate on only the top prospects, those in your primary market, or those interested in certain majors. Be realistic about your sample size. A participation or response rate even for a telephone survey, often hovers around the 20 percent mark (for telephone fieldwork and much lower for Web or postal methods) for this audience, sometimes higher for private institutions. For example, if you have 1,000 nonmatriculants, a reasonable goal would be 200 completed interviews. However, if you have just 500, a sample of 100 would be likely and sufficient.
- Pick the right time frame: For most institutions and most nonmatriculants, the best time to conduct these studies is shortly after you get the final word on their choice. This most often falls during the early summer months. The window is very small and requires persistence in order to get as many completed surveys as possible before the students pack up for orientation at their selected institution. You will likely need to make several attempts and completely exhaust the list in order to garner a sufficient sample size.
- To compare or not compare: If your budget allows, invest in a side-by-side assessment of your matriculating students. Using the same instrument and conducting the fieldwork at the same time as the nonmatriculants will enable side-by-side comparisons and shed light on key differences for those who chose you and those who didn’t.
- Design your instrument: Ask the biggest question (“why them and not us”), of course, but ask it in different ways several times. Include specifics in close-ended questions in order to ensure that you cover crucial areas of interest and potential differentiation (often process related, cost/affordability, customer service, campus visit experience, direct comparisons with the college of choice, etc. questioning). Mix it up with open-ended questioning to get additional insight and spontaneous thoughts about key areas as well.
- Conduct the fieldwork: This can be fairly labor intensive. Although the study can be completed via the Web or postal mail, you will likely get very poor response rates and often unrepresentative samples. To gain control over the sample size and composition, a phone survey is the most efficient method. For most institutions, every name on the list will need to be contacted in order to achieve the desired sample.
Although there are many more points of consideration before embarking on this critically important study, these are just a few pointers that will you get started. If you don’t do any other admissions marketing research studies in a given year, this would be the one.
Photo by: cynergy
