Build econometric models of the enrollment probability of your admitted students.
These models are designed to capture all of the independent factors that may affect your admitted students’ enrollment decisions: ability, location, program, major, family income or EFC, prior contacts with the University, financial-aid awards, competitor school rankings, etc.
With these models, we can assess the price sensitivity of your students and understand more about the role financial aid plays in their decision making. To construct the models, we test the significance of all relevant variables from the database, identifying variables which improve the accuracy of the enrollment prediction. We also perform extensive testing of the predictive accuracy and power of the models against previous years known data. We also test for aberrations and anomalies within your data. With these models, we are able to estimate the separate influence on enrollment probabilities of each relevant factor -- from student ability to geographic location to intended area of study, with special attention on the role of financial-aid offers.
We shun the “black box” philosophy. The models and all of their internal structures, coefficients, and statistical detail will be absolutely and completely open to the University. Many other firms aggressively shield this information from their clients; we believe in open collaboration.
Packaging recommendations
We use our econometric enrollment probability models to design a series of packaging grids that show alternative approaches to achieving your often conflicting enrollment goals. What would be the optimum aid allocation to maximize enrollment or net tuition revenue or student selectivity and ability, etc?
We work collaboratively with clients to review these “what-if” exercises and arrive at a set of merit- and need-based packaging rules.
We use a number of different approaches to offer clients a menu of alternative packaging rules which capture their enrollment goals and, more importantly, the “weights” or imprortance of those goals.
Which is your most important goal for next fall’s enrollment:
- a larger class,
- more net tuition revenue,
- more selectivity and a higher academic profile,
- increased diversity, etc?
How much more important is one goal compared with other goals that you might have for the class?
Our grant optimization process provides clients with a way to review, test and simulate alternative packaging rules that each embody different enrollment goals and different weights associated with each of those goals.