Are you prepared to recruit ‘Gen P’?

When was the last time you saw a teenager willingly answer a phone call?

As the parent of teenagers myself, I can attest that many members of ‘Gen P’—the students whose past few years have been defined by the pandemic and its aftermath—interact with the world very differently than their predecessors.

Our partners are noticing these shifts in behavior as well. A number of VPEMs have shared with me recently that they’re seeing new patterns in prospective student interactions, such as students being markedly less responsive to counselor phone calls. But are these anecdotal observations or a real trend?

Fortunately, we now have some hard data to turn to, thanks to the latest edition of EAB’s Student Communication Preferences Survey. For more than a decade, we’ve asked high school students about their college search preferences and behaviors. And thanks to the survey’s longevity and expansive reach (over 20,000 students this year!), it’s an ideal tool for determining whether an observed student behavior represents a true phenomenon.

Here are three key insights for enrollment leaders about recruiting this new generation of students.

Insight #1: Timing of student search behaviors is shifting.

One of the biggest changes we observed in college search behavior is related to timing: students aren’t completing steps in their enrollment journey according to the “traditional” timeline. For example, today’s students are beginning their college research later than their predecessors did. As illustrated in the chart below, 67% of participants in our 2019 survey had started researching colleges by the end of their sophomore year. In 2023, only 40% of students had started researching by that point.

It makes sense that the pandemic played a role in this trend: high school counselors reported that many of their students were less focused on college research during the pandemic, as they had less access to school resources and deprioritized college planning amid the stressors of the pandemic. And while we’re currently observing this trend among students who were in high school during the pandemic, it remains to be seen whether it will continue among students who were in middle school during the pandemic.

Enrollment leaders have also reported another shift in the timing of student search behaviors: students are increasingly delaying visits from the traditional spring of junior year or fall senior year timing to spring of senior year, after they’ve been admitted. One enrollment leader I spoke with theorized that, with students applying to a large number of schools, they’re waiting to see where they’re admitted and what their aid awards are before committing to visiting schools.

We also found that mental health concerns related to college were more prevalent among first-generation students and low-income students than their counterparts, as the graphs below illustrate.

Download the full report on recruiting ‘Gen P’

Insight #3: Students are academically underprepared.

In addition to understanding how changes in social and emotional well-being impacted college search behaviors, we were also eager to understand the impact of pandemic learning loss. While academic proficiency levels in the United States have been low for many years, pandemic disruptions in classroom learning had a major impact. And while students lost ground academically across demographic groups, historically underserved students were especially likely to experience losses in academic achievement because they were less likely to receive in-person instruction during the pandemic.

We saw these trends reflected in a variety of EAB survey data. In our 2023 survey of high school counselors, 73% of high school counselors reported that the pandemic had at least moderately weakened their students’ academic preparation. We also found that, as students consider their college education, many are understandably nervous about their academic preparedness: twenty-six percent of students surveyed by EAB selected “whether I’ll be successful in college” as a top concern about college, behind only affordability and cost considerations.

While the data points above illustrate the immediate effects of pandemic learning loss on today’s high school students, it’s important to bear in mind that we’re likely to experience the pandemic’s continued—and evolving—effects among high school students for years to come. As shown below, learning loss as early as third grade can have a profound impact on likelihood to graduate from high school and enroll in college.

So, the verdict is in: in important ways, today’s high school students are behaving differently from their recent predecessors. clear patterns have emerged in Gen P’s behavior, I’d bet we’ll continue to see changes in how students are approaching college search across the coming months. We’ll be watching closely, and as we learn more, we look forward to sharing those updates with you.