As I menioned in my previous post, I am spending the week at the EDUCAUSE conference on technology in higher education. One reason I'm here is that I presented a paper on using dimensional data models to support strategic enrollment management . While I don't expect many visitors to this site to have an interest in dimensional data models (If you do go to the contact us page and send me an email.  I'll be happy to chat about this facinating topic.), I do think prospective college students would benefit from understanding a bit about strategic enrollment management.

 Why? Because strategic enrollment management impacts the admissions and financial aid decisions of many colleges. Knowing what we are worrying about will help you better understand your chances of getting into a particular college, or of finding a college that will not only admit you put offer you a generous financial aid package. 

First you need to understand is that almost all colleges worry about how many students they need to admit in order to have the number of new students they need to support their budgets, but not more students than they can serve. Second, you need to recognize that if college offers admission to applicants who are less well qualified in order to increase their number of students, they will pay a long term price because their formal rankings and reputation will suffer, resulting in fewer applications in the future. Finally, you need to realize that most colleges are interested not just in admitting students, but in admitting students who are most likely to stay and graduate. 

Data is used in strategic enrollment management to predict how much different levels of financial aid influence the probability that an admitted applicant will matriculate, how likely the student is to stay and complete the program, and what that student will do to the academic profile of the institution. This is why you are likely to receive more generous financial aid offers where your high school grades and SAT or ACT test scores improve the admitted student profile, and less likely to be admitted if you will harm that profile. You can use information available in various college guides to see where you stand compared to the 25th and 75th percentile of admitted students. If a college admitted 50% of their applicants and you are at the 25th percentile, you need to put together an excellent application to be admitted. If you are at or above the 75th percentile, you are likely to receive a generous aid and/or scholarship offer to help boost their academic profile.  Just something to keep in mind as you put together your list of colleges where you plan to apply.