Tag: Falling

  • Why Some Colleges are Thriving While Others Are Falling Behind 

    Why Some Colleges are Thriving While Others Are Falling Behind 

    The New Reality of Enrollment Management 

    For many colleges, the fall 2025 enrollment numbers brought a mix of emotions. While some institutions are celebrating record-breaking classes and hitting their targets, others—equally committed to their mission—fell short. This stark contrast isn’t just a symptom of demographic shifts; it reveals a deeper, more urgent truth: the status quo is failing higher education.

    Many institutions are struggling not just because of demographics, but because of outdated, fragmented enrollment strategies. They are kept in silos—admissions, marketing, financial aid—creating an inconsistent student experience that leads to missed starts, early attrition and lost potential.

    Today’s Modern Learners are more discerning than ever. They expect speed, personalization and transparency, making fragmented approaches not only ineffective but unsustainable. The future of higher education does not belong to those defending the past. It belongs to institutions bold enough to build what’s next—a unified, data-informed strategy that transforms these challenges into opportunities for sustainable growth.

    Missed Starts: The Silent Threat to Student Recruitment  

    Enrollment managers face a stark reality: the decision-making window has never been shorter. Students aren’t shopping around like they once did. Students are making decisions faster than ever. According to our latest Engaging the Modern Learner Report, 67% inquire at only one or two institutions, and 45% apply to just one. This is a fundamental shift. In 2015, only 43% of learners would enroll at the first school that contacted them. By 2025, that figure has skyrocketed to nearly three in four. For your institution, this is a wake-up call. The window to turn interest into enrollment is closing, and any delay, inconsistent follow-up or fragmented outreach means you lose students before they even begin their journey.

    Speed and consistency are not just critical—they are the price of admission. Slow, fragmented communication—whether through delayed responses, inconsistent messaging, or glaring gaps across departments—is not an inefficiency. It is a direct cause of a hemorrhaging enrollment funnel. The only way to transform this challenge is with a unified enrollment management approach.

    Think of the bright prospective student who loves your campus culture after a visit. The prospective student sends a follow-up email with a simple question about a scholarship deadline, but the admissions team is swamped, and a response is delayed. Meanwhile, another school sends a personalized text message with the needed information, along with a link to a testimonial from a student in the desired major. This prospective student’s trust is built and stolen by the competing school, and your school is now completely out of the consideration mix—not because of your academics or campus life, but because of a missed connection.

    The Four Pillars of Strategic Enrollment Management

    The path to reversing missed starts and early attrition isn’t guesswork—it’s a disciplined, coordinated approach. The Four Pillars of Strategic Enrollment Management give institutions a clear framework to turn insights into action, strengthen recruitment and improve student success. By combining brand alignment, AI-driven analytics, full-funnel marketing and student-centric engagement, campuses can act decisively, close gaps in the enrollment process, and ensure every touchpoint moves students toward enrollment and persistence. 

    Strategic Brand Alignment for Student Recruitment 

    In a crowded market, a compelling and authentic brand is not optional—it’s the foundation of any winning student recruitment strategy. Reputation drives decisions more than ever, with 31% of all applicants and 51% of traditional undergraduates ranking it among their top factors for choosing a school. Most Modern Learners start their search with the institution itself rather than a specific program, which means that without a strong, visible brand, your institution risks being overlooked before the conversation even begins. For marketing and enrollment leaders, this makes it clear that visibility and authenticity are essential for influencing enrollment outcomes.

    Brand is also about proving value. Affordability remains important, but today’s Modern Learners are increasingly focused on career outcomes and program benefits in addition to cost. Messaging must clearly convey the tangible return on investment and the real-world impact of a degree to resonate with prospective students. By aligning programs with student aspirations and demonstrating clear student success outcomes, institutions can create meaningful, personalized engagement that drives enrollment forward.

    AI-Powered Analytics and Performance Optimization 

    Data alone won’t drive results; insights must inform every decision. Integrating AI into your enrollment strategy isn’t a strategy of the future—it’s a strategy of now. Competitive institutions use predictive insights to identify which students are most likely to apply, enroll and persist, turning complex data into actionable strategies. By analyzing engagement, inquiries, social sentiment and historical trends, enrollment managers can uncover funnel leaks, prioritize outreach, and allocate resources effectively. 

    At EducationDynamics, we combine AI-driven insights with human expertise to ensure recommendations are contextually grounded. This lets teams act quickly, maintain consistency and optimize every touchpoint. Integrated with targeted marketing insights, these analytics help institutions reach the right students with personalized messaging, strengthening enrollment management and driving long-term success. 

    Full-Funnel Marketing for Student Recruitment and Retention 

    Modern Learners move seamlessly across digital, social, email, and traditional channels—and they expect institutions to meet them wherever they are. A full-funnel marketing approach ensures every interaction reinforces the institution’s brand while delivering timely, personalized and meaningful engagement. 

    Now more than ever, students’ attention spans are short and their decision-making windows are fast. Consistent, relevant communication at every stage of the journey is critical: it keeps prospects engaged, strengthens trust, and positions your institution as a top choice. By aligning program-specific messaging with the broader institutional brand, enrollment managers create a unified narrative that drives conversions, builds credibility, and strengthens student engagement across the entire enrollment journey. 

    Every touchpoint—from initial awareness to follow-up engagement—works in concert to reduce lost starts, increase inquiry-to-application conversion and support long-term student success. This integrated approach ensures your marketing investments deliver measurable results while keeping prospective students moving efficiently through the enrollment funnel. 

    Student-Centric Enrollment and Retention for Student Success 

    Personalized engagement is a critical pillar in turning prospects into enrolled students and lifelong advocates. Students expect timely guidance, responsiveness and a sense that their individual goals are understood and valued. AI tools, including chatbots and virtual assistants, provide 24/7 support for routine questions, ensuring no inquiry is left unanswered. While technology handles the routine, your team’s expertise remains the essential ingredient. It’s the human connection—the empathy, the guidance and the personal touch—that ultimately drives commitment. Technology amplifies your reach; your team delivers the relationships.

    A student-centric approach ensures every touchpoint aligns with the learner’s journey, making communications, guidance, and support feel relevant and meaningful. With the right tools, data, and training, campuses can anticipate student needs, address obstacles proactively, and build confidence early in the enrollment process. This approach strengthens trust, boosts engagement, improves persistence, and turns every interaction into an opportunity to reinforce your institution’s brand while driving measurable student success.

    Uncover the Student Experience 

    By now, it’s clear: fragmented enrollment strategies and inconsistent outreach cost institutions students. Modern Learners expect speed, personalization and clarity—anything less, and they move on. The challenge for enrollment managers is not just knowing where students drop off, but having the tools to act before interest is lost.

    Mapping the student journey provides that clarity. By tracing the entire enrollment process from inquiry to start, it uncovers friction points—broken links, slow follow-up, confusing financial aid—that silently derail prospects. Enrollment teams can pinpoint exactly where disengagement happens, intervene strategically and ensure every touchpoint reinforces your brand promise while supporting student success.

    To take it a step further, you can secretly shop your own institution to reveal how your enrollment experience truly feels to the student. Delayed responses, generic messaging or unhelpful chat functions aren’t just minor inefficiencies—they signal misalignment and break trust. By uncovering these gaps, this process informs targeted improvements in communication, staff workflows and recruitment strategies, keeping your institution competitive in a fast-moving market.

    Together, these tools offer a concrete roadmap to unify brand, marketing and engagement efforts—turning insights into action, closing gaps before students disengage, and ensuring every interaction drives measurable enrollment and student success.

    In today’s competitive landscape, the institutions winning enrollment aren’t just reacting—they’re thinking bigger. They recognize that success comes from cross-functional collaboration, where departments work together to deliver cohesive, personalized experiences for Modern Learners.

    A Unified Enrollment Strategy turns isolated efforts into a coordinated system designed to:

    • Capture student intent faster
    • Reduce missed starts
    • Increase retention
    • Strengthen long-term student success

    This is more than efficiency—it’s a strategic mindset. By aligning every department around the student journey, anticipating needs, and curating experiences that reflect the expectations of Modern Learners, institutions build trust, enhance engagement and position themselves for sustainable growth and measurable outcomes.

    Transform Your Enrollment Strategy 

    The status quo won’t carry institutions into 2026 and beyond. To stay competitive, enrollment leaders must move beyond fragmented processes and adopt integrated strategies that deliver speed, personalization, and authenticity at scale. At EducationDynamics, we do more than unify departments—we help institutions transform scattered efforts into a cohesive system that drives measurable student success. 

    Don’t let a fragmented strategy define your future. It’s not too late to turn things around. We help institutions move beyond the status quo to build a unified system that fixes funnel leaks, increases retention and delivers measurable student success. 

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  • Falling mature student numbers requires policy action

    Falling mature student numbers requires policy action

    With the clutch of traditional higher education flashpoints accounted for – A level and SQA results days, and a clearing season reported to be particularly fraught in some quarters – the summer is drawing to a close, and a new academic year is upon us.

    Eighteen year olds are set to attend universities in record numbers, up 5 per cent year on year and up 27 per cent since 2016. This is unquestionably a great thing. However, it masks a troublingly stubborn decline in mature students numbers.

    In recent years, the number of these students – those aged 21 and over (or 25 and over for postgraduate study) – entering UK universities has been falling at an alarming rate, down by 26 per cent since 2016 according to UCAS. This decline may sound like a niche concern, but it carries big implications for the wider economy, for skills shortages, and for the prospects of people who want to reskill later in life.

    As the government prepares to roll out the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), there’s an urgent opportunity to rethink how the sector and society support adult learners and to ensure that lifelong education becomes a central pillar of our skills system.

    The current picture

    While the signs from clearing so far offer some encouragement, due perhaps to a sluggish economy, the data remains stark. Over the past decade or more, the number of mature students entering higher education has steadily declined, down 43 per cent since 2012.

    The causes are multifaceted, but a shift began with the introduction of higher fees in 2012 and has persisted – it is well established that mature students tend to be more debt-averse, so this coupled with the rising cost of living and the upfront financial commitment of a degree will no doubt put off many.

    Others may well be put off by a lack of flexibility. While real strides have been made in this area, particularly at modern universities, the structures of funding and regulation mean a lot of courses are still designed for school-leavers with the time and freedom to study full-time. Family responsibilities, limited employer support for training and the still-dominant perception that universities are designed for 18-year-olds will also play a role.

    The pandemic briefly nudged some adults back into learning, but the overall trend remains downward. Without targeted action, these numbers are unlikely to recover on their own.

    A price to pay

    Why does this matter beyond the university sector? Because a thriving economy depends on people being able to learn, retrain, and adapt throughout their lives. Mature students often bring real-world experience into classrooms and tend to choose courses that fill urgent skills shortages – in health and social care, teaching, engineering, IT, and other high-demand sectors.

    When these pathways dry up, industries suffer. Skills gaps are prevalent across key sectors and have been estimated by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation to cost the economy almost £40bn per year. Without a pipeline of retrained workers, employers struggle to fill gaps, productivity growth stalls, and regional economies miss opportunities to regenerate.

    It’s also an issue of social mobility. For people whose school results closed off higher education the first time around, mature study offers a second chance to change careers, boost their earnings, and improve their families’ prospects. If that route disappears, inequality widens – and our economy pays the price.

    A new hope?

    The LLE, due to launch in 2026, aims to reshape post-18 education in England by enabling a move away from the traditional three- or four-year degree as the default model. Instead, individuals will be able to draw on a single pot of funding – equivalent to four years of study, or around £38,000 – and use it flexibly over their lifetimes, taking courses in smaller, more targeted chunks.

    In principle, this modular approach could open the door for adults with work and family commitments, allowing them to pursue short courses when needed and return later for further study without losing access to funding. By making learning more flexible, affordable, and tied to labour market needs, the LLE is pitched as a way to lower barriers that currently deter many mature learners, particularly in an economy being reshaped by AI, automation, and the green transition.

    Yet the promise of the scheme is far from guaranteed. The rollout is proving complex, with uncertainties over how funding will be administered, whether universities and colleges will be equipped to redesign courses in modular formats, and how easily learners will be able to navigate the system. Awareness is another challenge: adults with established careers and busy lives may not know the scheme exists, or may find the process of accessing funding too bureaucratic to be worth the effort. Employers, meanwhile, will need to support staff in using the entitlement – something that cannot be assumed.

    There are also cultural and practical reasons to doubt whether large numbers of mature learners will take up the LLE. Adults may be reluctant to re-enter formal education, particularly if they are anxious about returning to study, lack confidence with digital learning, or doubt the value of small qualifications in the job market. Others may weigh the potential benefits against the costs – not only financial, but also in time and disruption to family or work responsibilities – and decide against it.

    In short, while the LLE represents a bold attempt to modernise lifelong education, its success will depend on whether the system can overcome significant implementation hurdles and whether mature learners themselves see it as accessible, relevant, and worthwhile.

    The role of modern universities

    Universities are at the heart of this challenge. They too cannot rest on their laurels and must continue to consider how they design, market, and deliver their courses if they are to serve lifelong learners as effectively as they serve 18-year-olds fresh from colleges. Modern universities, which traditionally teach the majority of mature undergraduates, must continue to lead this agenda from the front.

    Partnerships with local employers, another area in which modern universities lead, are key. By aligning courses with regional economic needs – for example, creating pathways into green technologies, health and care, or digital sectors – universities can help ensure that adults return to education with a clear line of sight to better jobs.

    But a cultural shift is just as important. Universities need to be hubs for lifelong learning, not just finishing schools for young adults, and the government has significant work to do in getting the word out to the general public that the opportunity to study or re-train is there to be taken.

    The decline in mature students is more than a higher education story. It’s a warning sign for our economy and for our ability to adapt to change. The LLE offers a chance to reverse the trend – but only if universities, employers, and policymakers work together to make lifelong learning a reality.

    In a fast-changing world, education cannot stop at 21. The people of Britain need a system that allows people to keep learning, keep adapting, and keep contributing to the economy throughout their lives.

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  • Who’s really falling behind within boys’ underachievement?

    Who’s really falling behind within boys’ underachievement?

    The recent “Boys Will Be Boys” report from HEPI is the latest in a long-running series of warnings about a male crisis in education.

    Boys and men are underperforming relative to girls and women, we’re told, and the gap grows wider each year.

    While it’s true that men, overall, receive fewer “Good Degrees” (Firsts or 2:1s) than women – by a margin ranging from 3.3 to 5.1 percentage points over the last eight years – this isn’t true for all men.

    In fact, gay male students have consistently outperformed not only their heterosexual male peers but, in several years, even heterosexual women. In 2022–23, 82.6 per cent of gay men achieved a Good Degree, compared with 73.6 per cent of men overall and 78.5 per cent of women.

    The attainment gap looks very different when you stop treating men as a monolith, and this is evidence of exactly why we need to start resetting our mindsets around attainment gaps.

    The data I draw on aren’t publicly available on the Office for Students (OfS) data dashboard, these were obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request as part of my doctoral research into the “LGB attainment premium” — a term I use to describe the consistent pattern of lesbian, gay and bisexual students, outperforming their heterosexual peers in terms of degree outcomes

    The absence of routinely published, intersectional data means sweeping assumptions are often made about entire groups, treating men or LGBTQ+ students as though they share a single educational experience. My research looks to understand not just why these attainment gaps exist, but what they reveal about identity, inclusion, and academic culture in higher education.

    Who do we forget when we generalise men?

    It’s politically expedient to speak of male underachievement in broad stroke terms, but such generalisations smooth over differences among men of various class, cultural, ethnic, or – as my research shows – sexual identities. While the HEPI report does highlight intersecting disadvantages briefly, it doesn’t probe into whether there are any advantaged male groups: in this case, gay men.

    If policies and institutional strategies focus on fixing men, – or any group for that matter – higher education risks investing in universal interventions that don’t serve those already thriving. Gay men have faced systemic barriers for generations and still do – however, gay men are, on average, performing well academically in higher education.

    The HEPI report references an article commissioned by Civitas and written by Jo-Anne Nadler, which claims that 24 per cent of parents believe boys are made to feel ashamed of being male at school.

    The article argues that “critical social justice” is undermining schools, and positions inclusive practices — including the visibility of LGBTQ+ identities — as part of the problem. The piece presents anecdotal examples without broader data context and treats a wide range of educational themes (from decolonisation to queer theory) as a singular ideological threat.

    The danger with this kind of framing is that it obscures more than it reveals. It flattens the experiences of boys and men into a single story of victimhood, without exploring where success is happening, or why. When discussions about identity and education are reduced to culture war talking points, we lose sight of the more meaningful, evidence-led questions: what works, for whom, and how can we build on that?

    Hearing from the students themselves

    In April 2025, I ran survey with 113 LGBTQ+ respondents at a small arts university, asking undergraduate and postgraduate students about their experiences of academic confidence, belonging, and campus culture. This aimed to question why an academic premium may exist for some marginalised groups.

    Within the survey, one recurring theme stood out for gay men: a sense of needing to work twice as hard to be recognised, validated or to compensate for years of marginalisation. For some respondents in the survey, academic success functioned like armour. A rebuttal against stigma they’d faced.

    This echoes findings from the United States, where researchers John Pachankis and Mark Hatzenbuehler (2013) identified a similar pattern among sexual minority men, referring to it as the “Best Little Boy in the World” hypothesis — the idea that gay men may overinvest in achievement-related domains as a deflection of the stigmatisation that has come from their sexuality.

    Overperformance makes even more sense when placed in a wider economic context. The HEPI report does recognise that men, despite their academic underperformance, still earn more than women in the workplace. The picture is similar also for LGBTQ+ workers in both the United States and United Kingdom – gay men typically earn less than heterosexual men. Therefore, if the playing field is never truly even, it makes sense that those facing stigma would push themselves harder to compete in an biased labour market.

    Inclusive cultures – benefitting whom?

    My initial survey data suggests that inclusive campus cultures make a tangible difference. Students spoke positively about visible LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts — from staff wearing pride pin badges and inclusive posters, to active student societies and lecturers openly sharing their experiences. These small but meaningful signals were consistently linked to a stronger sense of belonging and academic attainment.

    But this sense of inclusion was not experienced equally. Many queer, gender non-conforming and transgender students reported that practices such as deadnaming or misgendering created a sense of exclusion, with knock-on effects for their mental health and academic performance.

    While there is an observed attainment premium for lesbian, gay and bisexual students , the trend does not extend uniformly across all LGBTQ+ groups, where queer and transgender student typically receive less good degrees. However, this picture is changing. The attainment gap for transgender students, and those whose gender is not the same as the one assigned at birth, narrowed from 6.2 percentage points in 2015–16 to just 1.5percentage points in 2022–23.

    A similar trend is visible among students who identify as “other” as their sexual orientation, whose attainment gap shrank from 14 per centage points to 2.5 per cent in the same period. In other words, identity-based initiatives — often dismissed by critics as woke or virtue signalling — may, in fact, be delivering measurable academic benefits for marginalised groups.

    Calling out the blind spots in policy and practice

    My aim is not to ignore the fact male attainment has slipped back to its pre-pandemic low, or the broader need to support men’s success in higher education. There seems to be an impression that there is an emerging story of who feels they must try hard, and those who know they can afford not to. It’s the tortoise and the hare, however in this version, the hare still wins. The race is rigged.

    The question needs to be – how can the sector make the race worth running for everyone?

    The route to more effective policy is to look at men’s attainment through a finer lens – disaggregate by sexuality, race, socio-economic status, disability, and more to uncover more accurate insights. Data on gay male attainment makes it clear this isn’t just a male–female divide, and while higher performance might seem like a positive story, my initial findings, along with research by Pachankis and Hatzenbuehler, suggest that overcompensation often comes with steep costs, including burnout and persistent stress.

    The HEPI report suggests that the solution may lie in assessments. In their report, they explain that men tend to perform less well in coursework-based assessments compared to exams, particularly when compared with women.

    Through my FoI request to OfS, I was able to analyse attainment data by discipline and sexuality. The data shows that disciplines such as creative arts, education, and social sciences , all of which typically favour coursework over exams, are where the gay male academic premium is most typically pronounced.

    Conversely, fields like environmental sciences, engineering, and architecture, which may lean toward exams or technical assessments, show lower attainment premiums for gay men. However, in stark contrast to this, the largest gay male attainment premium (9.68 percentage points) appears in natural and mathematical sciences – a field typically associated with exams. This suggests that while assessment style and disciplinary culture may influence outcomes, they are only part of the picture.

    This could suggest that success in these disciplines might not indicate that the environment is more inclusive — but rather, that some gay men are excelling despite those barriers. This reinforces the need to avoid simple causal explanations, and to examine how identity, culture, and assessment interact in complex and sometimes surprising ways.

    Moving beyond the monolith

    While it’s convenient to lump all men into a single underachieving group, the data and lived realities show a much more complex picture than what the HEPI report offers. Yes, men overall attain fewer good degrees than women, but gay men outscore both heterosexual men and, in some cases, women.

    Nikolai Elkins If the sector is actually interested in improving outcomes for all students, it can’t continue to rely on these broad narratives. Policymakers and universities need to dig into data, disaggregate by other identity factors, and examine which practices foster an environment where everyone can thrive.

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  • The Net Price of College Is Falling for Most Students

    The Net Price of College Is Falling for Most Students

    Title: College Prices Are Falling for Everyone (Almost)

    Source: Brookings Institution

    Author: Phillip Levine

    New research from the Brookings Institution reveals a surprising truth: inflation-adjusted college prices have fallen for most students over the past five years. Phillip Levine’s analysis examines what students actually pay—the net price after financial aid—rather than the sticker prices that dominate media coverage.

    Using data from net price calculators at 200 institutions and proprietary financial aid records from 14 highly endowed colleges, his findings challenge the common narrative:

    Widespread price decreases: Between 2019-20 and 2024-25, inflation-adjusted net prices declined across institution types. Public flagship universities saw reductions of 7.1-17.3 percent, depending on family income level, while other public institutions experienced decreases of 8.5-13.2 percent. Private colleges with very large endowments had substantial declines, ranging from 7.0-43.4 percent, and tuition-dependent private colleges saw net prices drop by 16.8-23.3 percent.

    Lower-income students benefit most: Families earning $40,000 annually, representing the 25th percentile of the income distribution, experienced the largest reductions, with net prices dropping by 13.2-40.9 percent depending on institution type.

    Wide price variation by income: At private institutions with very large endowments, students from families earning $40,000 pay approximately $4,400 annually, while those from families earning $240,000 pay $82,800 annually.

    At many institutions, families earning $40,000 are still expected to contribute $15,000-$20,000 annually. Only the most heavily endowed institutions typically offer aid packages that lower-income families can reasonably manage. This raises important policy implications: proposed increases to endowment taxes may undermine institutions’ ability to provide generous financial aid, potentially harming the very students who benefit most from their pricing models. Private colleges and universities rely heavily on endowments to fund scholarships, research, and education—often more than they rely on tuition revenue. Treating endowments like business profits could shift the financial burden onto students and weaken U.S. innovation.

    The complexity of college pricing creates uncertainty for families, policymakers, and media. Greater transparency about the true cost of attendance is essential. By focusing on actual prices rather than headline-grabbing sticker prices, we can help reshape the national conversation on college affordability and ensure that misconceptions don’t deter qualified students from pursuing higher education.

    To read the full Brookings research analysis, click here.

    —Alex Zhao

    If you have any questions or comments about this blog post, please contact us.

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  • Yes, your yield rate is STILL Falling, 2023

    Yes, your yield rate is STILL Falling, 2023

    This now-annual post is one that boggles and befuddles people, especially those who think that your yield rate is something you control by flipping switches.  In reality, yield rate is controlled by something much more powerful: Algebra.

    First, let’s review what yield rate is:  Colleges get applications, and they admit a certain percentage of them.  In aggregate colleges admit the vast majority of applicants.  Even though this visualization shows an aggregate admit rate of 58.3% in 2023 (the red line at bottom left), the set of colleges in the data only include colleges required to report to IPEDS; this excludes community colleges and any other institution that considers itself an Open Admissions institution.

    Of that 58%, some percentage enroll, and that’s called the yield rate.  As you can see, the yield rate (the purple line at bottom center) has been falling every single year since 2001.  This is a function of math.  Applications (the orange bars at top left) have risen 211%, while the total enrolled has increased by only 43%.  If you do the mental math, you can tell that more students are applying to more institutions, and getting more offers of admission.  In this scenario, yield rate goes down based on simple algebra.

    Which is not to say, of course, that some colleges haven’t shown increases in yield rates. More on that in a moment.

    There is one more calculation of interest, called the Draw Rate.  I did not invent the Draw Rate figure, and I do not know who did.  I only remember hearing it referred to sometime in the mid-1980s as I was a young admission officer.  It’s the college’s yield rate divided by the admit rate, and it is in some sense the best measure of market power and position.  It only became interesting to me when colleges started trying to pump up applications in order to appear to be more selective, believing that selectivity was what students and parents wanted.

    When you drive up applications artificially via things like Fast Apps, Smart Apps, VIP Apps, massive fee waivers, and other things, you generate applications from students who are far less likely to enroll (or yield).  And even though you might get nominally more selective, you lose that value when your yield rate goes down as a result.  Draw Rate accounts for that, in some measure, although it too, can be manipulated by taking half (or more) of your class via Early Decision or Restrictive Early Action.  Draw rate goes up when your yield rate increases and/or your admit rate falls.

    The blue line shows what has happened to our collective fascination with application increases: We’re working harder, and spinning our wheels faster, all in vain.  To be sure, you have to do this because your competitors are.  But it would be great if we never would have started down this path.

    Remember what I said about some colleges increasing yield even when collectively the rate has gone down?  Use the control at top right to put only the 12 Ivy Plus institutions into the visualization, and see what happens. Note the Draw Rate, and remember that the collective average is 0.36.

    That’s why I like that measure: It helps separate the market’s most powerful entities from all the rest. 

    Stay tuned: We’ll have the 2024 data in about a year!

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