How to Approach your Enrollment Yield Community Strategy
How to Approach Your Enrollment Yield Community Strategy
Communities are the best way to organize your prospective students and their families and create an easy separation of content. Ideally, your communities should mirror what you would typically cover on an admitted student visit day and answer the questions you hear most frequently. When thinking about the prospective student experience, it is important to think “where will an admitted student start their exploration?”, “what is the most relevant information I should share?”, and “how will they navigate the site throughout the discovery and application period?”
It is also important to think about who will own your communities and what responsibilities they have. We do not advice creating a community if there is not at least one student ambassador/admissions officer community leader available for each community. This would also be a good time to consider pulling in campus partners who are actively engaged in the admissions process for a subset of your students. Community leaders should be regularly available and will act as the first line of defense when fielding questions for the admissions team.
While you are creating communities, it is a good time to think strategically about whether they should be public, private, or invitation only. How you are using your overall Wisr site and who is using it could determine who should have access to what information. Keep in mind that public groups are available for anyone to see and join, private groups require an invitation or approval to join but will still appear in the list of available communities to all members, and invitation only communities will be visible only to members of the group set by the admin or community leader.
With these questions in mind, here are Wisr’s suggestions for building communities for your Enrollment Yield site. Ultimately, you need to decide which communities best meet your institution’s needs, but here are some common communities among Wisr’s existing Enrollment Yield customers.
Welcome
The Welcome community should be your public one-stop-shop for information regarding the structure of the site, schedules, and where/when to find certain information. This is where you should host any welcome/final remarks videos/webinars as well as instructional posts that let your students and their families know what to expect in your other communities.
Do not expect much discussion to take place in your welcome community as this is mostly an information hub. We recommend having a weekly discussion post with information and updates for the week as well as a Topic related to which team members are regularly available and links to their profiles so your members can engage in 1:1 chat when necessary. It might also be a good place to track technical difficulties and other issues common to all users of your Wisr site.
Admitted Student Welcome Day
Many campuses host admitted students and their families on campus between notifications and decision deadlines. Campus visits are typically an integral part of a student’s decision where to accept their admission. While our current situation may not allow for tours and visits, we all hope one day these opportunities will return. Creating a community that provides updated information on admitted student days and registration information in your site makes Wisr a one-stop shop for information and a place to easily answer questions that will likely apply to several people. In the meantime, this is the best place to host activities and information that would typically occur during an admitted student experience.
Transfer Students
Students who are considering transferring to your institution have unique needs and questions that are not necessarily relevant to all admitted students. Providing a space where they can not only understand the transfer experience from a student life perspective, but also get more information on how their experience may differ from first-time freshmen and how their credits and classes will transfer will all be key to their decision-making. If possible, we recommend appointing a student and staff community leaders who came to your institution as transfer students to provide the most authentic voice about their experience.
International Students
International students will likely never have an opportunity to visit your campus before choosing to enroll. So, your Wisr site will be an invaluable tool for them to learn about your institution and will provide more information than just the school website. International applicants likely will have questions about additional materials required for visas, participating in pre-matriculation requirements from other countries, and what resources exist specifically for them as they transition to your institution. As their needs will be slightly different than domestic students, creating a community for international students will allow them to address their questions with people who are properly trained and connect with current international students who can explain the process and talk about their personal experience.
Parent and Family Members
Parents and family members have the most influence over a prospective student’s decision where to attend college. Giving them a place to engage and have their questions answered will provide information and comfort about your institution. For the parent and family community, we recommend having more senior-level staff involved and potentially inviting parents of current students to interact with parents and answer questions.
Ask An Admissions Counselor
This community is straight forward and the name alone should inform your members what to expect in this discussion board. Topics in this community should focus on various popular areas of discussion or frequently asked questions. For example, topics can cover outstanding requirements, upcoming deadlines, financial aid, commitment/depositing, etc. Make sure to note in each topic which admissions counselor is available to answer questions and the hours they will be available throughout the day. You may even consider pre-populating this discussion board with the questions you already answer regularly.
Ask An Financial Aid Counselor
As students and their families make critical decision about their finances and paying for college, having financial aid counselors readily available to answer general questions will be extremely helpful. Providing information on how to read financial aid reward letters and how to appeal decisions might save your Financial Aid Office an enormous amount of individual inquiries. We encourage you to include some language in your community about not sharing personal details and how students and their families can make an appointment to speak directly with a counselor.
Specific College/School Communities or Academic Experience
If your institution admits students to study within a specific school or college, we recommend having communities where information can be found about those schools and colleges. Create a community for each school/college and encourage members of that discipline to create content to inform students about the academic experience and resources available in their school/college. If you do not have distinct schools and colleges, instead, consider dedicating a community to the academic experience at your institution.
Content in this community can be anything from student “My Story” posts to recorded samples classes with professors to a tour of your state-of-the-art facilities. Each community should also have at least one student and one faculty/staff member related to that subject regularly available to answer questions and act as a point of contact for the community.
Student Athletes
Students who are admitted to your institution as varsity athletes likely received a high touch application process. Continue that level of engagement by allowing admitted student athletes to talk to current athletes and coaches about time commitments, how to balance academics and athletics, and understanding how your campus supports athletes.
Student Life
Imaging what your life would be like as a student at your institution is probably the most important factor students are considering when choosing where to accept an offer of admission. Living on campus, student organizations and Greek Life, athletics and intermural sports, and campus resources all factor in. Providing a clear picture of campus life and what students can expect by living and studying on your campus will help students understand whether your institution is a good fit.
Health and Wellness
As a growing area of concern for student and families, covering how your institution thinks about the health and wellness of your students will be essential. Providing information about physical and mental health services, stress management, and how students manage their health concerns is particularly important for some populations of students. You may want to remind students and their families that they should not post information about their personal medical conditions as these communities are public forums. To mitigate concerns, this community should provide contact information and links to professionals in the offices that most closely manage medical issues on your campus.
Affinity Groups
It will be critical for admitted students to feel comfortable that they will meet students similar to them when deciding where to go to college. Creating communities to reflect the rich diversity of your institution will show students and their families that people like them do exist. We definitely recommend having a strategy for admitted students to find what they are looking for without necessarily providing every affinity their own community – that would be a lot for your team to manage! Our recommendation is to try to pull out your largest single affinities and then group the rest under larger umbrellas, for instance Religious Life (as opposed to Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, etc.), Multicultural Students (as opposed to Asian, Black, Latinx, etc.), and then consider groups that otherwise would not fit into a larger context, for example First Generation Students, Veterans, and LGBTQ+ and Allies. Discussion threads within communities can help drill down to specific identities within the communities. These groups could either be set to public or private depending on sensitivity.
Interests and Hobbies
Similar to knowing there are people with similar affinities, knowing you will be able to find other students that share your hobbies and interests is also comforting. Leave this community general and allow students to seek out their new partner in crime who loves the same video game, is an avid knitter, or plans to join the pep band. These connections will begin to build a sense of belonging for admitted students and they will carry these relationships on to campus. Depending on how housing is assigned, students may also be able to identify students with common interest with whom they would like to room.
Geographic Communities
Students will likely be interested in connecting with their peers that are from the same area; whether across your state, country, or the world. Students may just want to meet each other or may also arrange meet-ups in their home communities. Knowing someone from close to home can ease the stress of moving away for students.
Study Abroad
Sixteen percent of undergraduate students enrolled in baccalaureate programs will study abroad during the course of their undergraduate careers. Where your study abroad programs allow student to most easily travel while gaining credit towards their majors could be a huge factor for a good number of your admitted students. In addition to including colleagues from your study abroad office, we encourage you to include students who have participated in study abroad programs to share their experience.
The Arts
While some students will have a strong focus in the arts for their academic studies, many others will want to get involved in arts-related activities as co-curricular participants or just enjoy the vast art and creative scene your institution offers. Whether it be campus museums, performing theater and musical groups, or classes students can take, showcase how your institution invests in the arts for students and community members to enjoy.
The First Year Experience
If your institution runs a robust orientation and first year experience program, take this opportunity to give students a glimpse of what their first year will look like and perhaps set some expectations. Showing students and their families you are prepared to invest in their success as first year students and beyond may set you apart in the decision-making process. Students and their families will want to know there are programs in place to help ease transition, safety nets in place to help students through the rough spots, and overall that your institution cares about retention and on-time graduation.
Culture and Traditions
An essential part of considering whether or not to attend your institution is learning about campus traditions, culture, and lingo (I bet you have a long list of acronyms every student needs to know). Designate a public community in your Wisr site for admitted students to learn when and why students jump into the fountain, run naked through campus, or play so much euchre. This community will help them get a real sense of what makes your institution unique. We recommend allowing your student ambassadors to rule this roost and share all the things they know and have learned about being a member of your campus community. Start threads for myths and legends, campus facts and figures, acronyms, and favorite traditions. The content of this community could also be great fodder for social activities and trivia games in your social programming.
AMA/Ask Me Anything
Ask Me Anything communities are a great way to lean on your student ambassadors and admissions staff to offer your admitted students and their families the most genuine and authentic perspectives. Use Topics and events to organize which AMAs are live and what topics they cover. AMAs are a great way to share more about student life and the student experience on campus.
Ambassador Hub
Since your Student Ambassadors will be using Wisr on a regular basis, we recommend creating a community for Ambassadors to communicate with each other and staff and act as a home base for their training, materials, and sharing tips and deadlines. This will keep all relevant information about upcoming meetings and trainings in one place and as well as serve a community for your team to interact. We recommend that this as an invitation only community for your student ambassadors and staff.