Four outdated assumptions undermining your student search strategy
When planning an enrollment strategy, enrollment teams must make a series of interconnected decisions: which students to focus on, when next to communicate with them, how to allocate investments across sources, and which metrics to use to evaluate performance. From my time as a vice president of enrollment, I know how difficult it is to step back and scrutinize each of those decisions while also managing the immediate demands of the cycle.
As a result, search strategies often evolve slowly, relying mostly on what has worked well in the past. That is usually practical, especially when budgets are tight and enrollment goals are getting higher. But a plan can continue producing names and inquiries while masking important weaknesses: priority students who are missing from the pool, early-search students who are reached too late, or sources whose influence is not fully reflected in traditional attribution.
Here are four assumptions worth pressure-testing before your student search plan is set in stone.
Assumption 1: What worked last cycle will work again this cycle
Past performance should heavily inform your strategy, but it shouldn’t go without scrutiny.
Our latest College Search Trends research shows why. Every region in the country is projected to lose some of its college-age population through 2031, but those declines will not happen evenly. The Southeast and Southwest are stabilizing at a 2025 baseline, while the Midwest, Northeast, and West settle into lower, pre-COVID baselines. Differences in college-going rates, student mobility, and competition will further separate the experiences of individual states and institutions.
These dynamics can reshape the opportunity within markets that once seemed predictable. In some cases, a previously productive market may be getting smaller or more competitive. In others, an institution may already have early traction in an overlooked market but lack a process for capitalizing on it.
One small private college recently worked with EAB to examine its funnel performance down to the ZIP-code level. The analysis distinguished among established markets, high-volume markets with weaker yield, and smaller emerging markets with promising conversion. Those findings helped the college identify where to protect, test, or redirect its recruitment investments via Appily Leads. After acting on the analysis, the institution saw an 11% increase in yield rate among EAB-connected inquiries year over year.
It’s wise to keep investing where you’re finding success, while also ensuring you’re keeping an eye on how trends in your markets are developing. Look at which markets are producing stronger or weaker results than they did previously, which student populations or academic interests remain underrepresented in your current pool, and where early evidence of fit may warrant a controlled test.
Assumption 2: Meaningful search activity only truly starts in junior and senior year
Many recruitment calendars are still built around the assumption that the most meaningful search activity happens late in junior year and during senior year. Those are still critical periods, but students are increasingly raising their hands earlier.
Our College Search Trends analysis found that by the start of sophomore year, the Class of 2026 had already submitted twice the inquiries it would submit throughout high school when compared to the class of 2023. Search, and the concrete enrollment actions that come along with it, is starting earlier over time.
It’s important to note that earlier search communications require a fundamentally different approach. A sophomore exploring possible majors has different questions from a senior comparing financial aid awards. The messages, calls to action, and communication cadences should reflect those differences. A responsive outreach strategy begins with understanding when different student segments become identifiable through each source. From there, enrollment teams can align their communications with the questions students are most likely to have at that stage.
Enrollment teams should look closely at whether they have a meaningful plan for sophomore engagement, understand when students typically become available through each major source, and vary their messaging based on grade level, interests, and demonstrated behavior. Each early interaction should also create a clear pathway to the next one.
Assumption 3: The source that produces the name first deserves credit for enrollment
First-source attribution (i.e., associating a deposit or enrollment with the source that initially delivered you the name) is easy to understand and, for many institutions, easy to track. It tells you where a student first entered your funnel, but it doesn’t tell you what actually influenced that student to apply or enroll.
A student might first appear through a purchased list, later explore your institution on a college-search platform, visit your website, engage with an email, attend an event, and then apply. Assigning all the credit to the first source ignores most of that journey.
To understand how those interactions relate to enrollment, EAB analyzed more than seven million student journeys across more than 50 institutions. Journeys that included one distinct source category had a 0.7% deposit rate. That increased to 2.6% for journeys with two categories and 12.9% for journeys spanning three or more. There is a clear association between richer, more connected recruitment journeys and stronger outcomes.
Different sources also perform different jobs. Some help institutions acquire right-fit students. Others give students additional ways to explore and signal interest. Still others reinforce that interest through direct outreach, events, and personalized engagement. As our research into healthy recruitment ecosystems shows, the strongest strategies coordinate these functions and assess how each contributes to enrollment, rather than looking at the original source as the only important factor in investment decisions.
Assumption 4: More names automatically create more opportunity
When inquiry or application volume is running behind goal, the most obvious response is to add more names. Sometimes that is exactly what the situation requires. But more volume will not necessarily address an audience gap if it’s not added with the right strategic approach.
An institution can have a large prospect pool and still be missing critical student populations, like those from priority markets, those interested in specific academic programs, or those whose behavior suggests they are actively considering peer and competitor schools. No single source provides access to the full student market, and the students missing from your current pool may simply be unavailable from the sources you’re using now.
A source’s contribution depends on which students it helps you reach and how you communicate with distinct student populations once they enter your funnel. Before adding more names, identify what you’re missing. Are you trying to expand into a specific geography, support an under-enrolled program, or find students already demonstrating relevant interests? The clearer the audience opportunity, the easier it is to choose sources and segmentation parameters that support it.
How well is your student search strategy keeping pace?
With demographics, student behavior, and source availability changing so quickly, it can be difficult to know whether the plan you’ve worked hard to build is truly keeping pace. And by the time a weakness appears in your application or deposit numbers, you may have less time to adjust than you would like.
That’s why we created EAB’s Student Search Diagnostic. Use it to step back from the day-to-day demands of the cycle, pressure-test your approach to audience reach, outreach timing, source performance, and conversion, and identify where focused changes could better position you to enroll your next class.
More Blogs
The enrollment game has changed. What still works?
What your advancement data is missing about donors and alumni
