Three Quick Tips for Smoothing the Way for Applicants

In the last several months, I’ve done a lot of thinking about the admission process from the family point of view, as my own daughter applied to independent high schools last year. Among the things I learned (and I learned a lot!), a few items struck me as “low-hanging fruit” to help families feel more invited into the admission process.

The key question is “Does the process reflects the mission and values of our school? And, further, does the process reflect the experience a family or student can expect should they enroll? This is hardly low-hanging fruit, but worth pointing out nonetheless. These are great questions for a leadership team or enrollment management team to discuss.

1. Double check that reminders do not arrive to a family on the weekend before a Monday event or appointment. If the family is left with questions, they have no one to reach out to before they are expected to participate in whatever the event is. (We know that we are likely checking email for exactly this reason, but a parent doesn’t necessarily know this!)

2. Details about any type of visit are essential to helping a family feel comfortable. What to wear? Should students bring a backpack? Water bottle? Lunch? Snack? Will a current student greet the student visitor? Will there be coffee and greeting for parents, or it a drop-off? Visits are high-stakes for the family and there is so much unknown by them that we take for granted. We know we will take great care of the family, regardless of how they show up. But the family is walking into a strange environment.

3. Rather than steering folks toward a general email address (info@… or admissions@…), try to find a way for families to email a person, even more so if you are a school dealing with high volume. That may seem counter-intuitive, but especially for schools where the process is naturally impersonal due to so many people, any effort to personalize is appreciated!

These quick changes will help families feel more prepared and welcomed into your community. Let me know what other easy tricks you have to smooth the way!

Survey Timing Considerations

Many schools do survey research to learn about why families do not choose to enroll after an admission offer (we’ll call these “declining families”). Often this work is done in the late spring, but I have recently been asked a few times about whether it’s too late to do the work now, in the middle of the fall. “It depends,” of course, but here are some considerations.

What will you do with the information you gather? For example, are you trying to explain low yield to the board? Or are you making a case for needing more financial aid? Is your team considering a program change that this data will inform? Different desired outcomes will inform time-sensitivity, as well as the formulation of questions.

Did you attempt to survey this group earlier? If so, you might consider a personal email with a link to a much shorter survey that acknowledges the earlier communication. Or, depending on the actual list of people, you might reach out personally to just a few and ask if they’d be willing to hop on the phone for a few minutes.

Are you worried about low response rates? My general rule of thumb is that some data is better than no data at all. It is nearly impossible to get statistically significant results in schools because our sample sizes are just too small. I wouldn’t worry about low response rates as long as the development and implementation of the survey is not too time-consuming for your team.

When is it just too late? When surveying families who have left your school (attrition), I don’t think it’s ever too late. Families who have something to say will often appreciate the opportunity to share. For the declining families, though, I’d say it’s probably not worth doing after November 1. By that point, families are embedded in their new school and are probably not thinking a lot about their experience with you anymore. Having said that, I do think that if you take the uber-personalized approach and reach out to people one-on-one for specific reasons, you might get good feedback at any time. It’s just about asking the right questions and framing the conversation effectively.

The bottom line is that survey research is an extremely valuable tool as you assess and understand the family experience with your school at various points in the journey. Timing is very important, but it’s not the only consideration when deciding whether to embark on the work.