An Enrollment Leader’s Guide to Yield and Melt Management

Why yield and melt are getting harder to manage

Yielding admitted students has never been more difficult or consequential. Factors such as the proliferation of application-aggregator platforms, changes in student attitudes, and shifting views on higher education make it increasingly difficult to predict who will enroll and what you can do to increase those numbers.

Tactics to improve yield and reduce melt

This report shows how colleges and universities are doing at getting students to enroll and reducing melt. Our piece also shares a comprehensive overview of tactics you can use to better engage admitted students, including:

• Embedding high-impact value messaging into post-admit and post-deposit communications
• Using data analytics to focus highly intensive and personalized outreach on parts of your admit pool where it will have the greatest impact
• Using chatbots and related forms of generative AI to scale highly personalized engagement
• Deploying a broadly scoped program of parent-engagement initiatives, aimed at winning the support of these all-important influencers and enablers of students

How yield and melt prediction models work

Predicting which admitted students will enroll and which are at risk of melt relies on data-driven prediction models rather than intuition or historical rules of thumb. These models draw on signals like engagement behavior and communication responsiveness to identify which students in your admit pool are likely to need targeted outreach, and which are already on track to enroll without further intervention.