In the 2018 Independent School Executive Forum’s Executive Roundtable series, Building and Sustaining a Competitive Advantage, researchers shared best practice strategies in the area of enrollment management and faculty professional development.
This resource center is designed to take the insights and best practices from our research on enrollment management, Expanding the Enrollment Funnel, and translate them into actionable change on your campus. Each resource is intended to help schools achieve their enrollment goals by expanding up funnel with a more proactive enrollment strategy. For more information on this complete research study, please contact your dedicated advisor.
In order to graduate students of the highest quality, independent schools seek to enroll students who are academically gifted, talented athletes and artists, represent diverse backgrounds, and are aligned with the mission and culture of the school. In the past, admissions teams were able to appeal to a steady stream of qualified, full-pay students to enroll in their school without putting much effort into identifying and attracting new families. However, as tuition has increased and the number of low-cost or free options for a high-quality K-12 education has grown, the size of the pool of available candidates has decreased. Furthermore, as high-income families have become more diverse and spread out geographically, existing admissions strategies have not adapted to reach new mission-aligned families.
These changes in the market require a new approach for independent school admissions teams to fill seats, as their traditional, often passive, ways of appealing to families are no longer working. Instead, admissions teams must evolve…