3 Strategies for Ensuring Students Actually Enroll After the Deposit
When an admitted student submits their deposit, enrollment teams rejoice. But even as deposits are made, you’re not quite off the hook. Some prospective students deposit only because they need a bit more time to make a decision, and therefore are still “shopping” schools. Others, though intending to enroll at the time of their deposit, may decide otherwise over the summer in between. And while no one knows what the state of things will be during this next admissions cycle, the pandemic has rendered decision-making beyond the next month quite unpredictable.
In other words, it might be more accurate to view some of the students who have deposited as your strongest prospects instead of seeing them as “current” students. Are you making it a priority to still nurture students who have deposited so that they actually commit to that final “call-to-action” of enrolling and/or setting foot on campus?
Below are three strategies for ensuring students actually enroll after they submit the deposit.
Be Clear and Consistent with Your Onboarding Messaging
There is a lot involved in getting students ready to attend.
How do they sign up and enroll for courses?
Do they need to submit immunization forms?
When is payment due for the first semester?
How do they get assigned to their residence halls?
How do they create a new login for the university portal and email addresses?
Many students are unaware of these many steps that they need to complete before arriving on campus. In order to walk them along through this necessary checklist, you need to be communicating with them regularly and clearly. You can do this by pointing them to specific areas of your website and/or including all necessary information in smaller, well-crafted emails.
You can also develop a comprehensive guide that covers everything students (and their parents) need to know. For example, Point Loma Nazarene University created a “New Student Guide,” which they have available on their website. The guide is also tailored to the current academic year (this, being tailored for the 2020 year, devotes special focus to the pandemic), which allows you to personalize the information to be more relevant.
Of course, not every single student is going to read a PDF cover to cover, and so it’s also important to break up this information into easily digestible emails, social media reminders or a page for accepted students. However, since email will be your dominant form of conversation with students who have deposited, make sure all necessary information is communicated to them via that channel (and more than once!). This is the best way to provide them with key information: reminders for upcoming due dates, detailed instruction for completing tasks (setting up the portal access, submitting medical forms, etc), and so on.
Finally, consistent messaging allows you to continue to remind them why they ultimately decided to give your school a shot. If you are awarded a new ranking by a third-party publication, share it with them. If a current student or alumni makes the news, invite them to read the story. You may already be doing much of this with “true” prospective students (and their parents), but make sure you don’t forget about those sitting “in between” prospective and current students. Continue to provide them with “affirmation” marketing content that gets them—and keeps them—excited about their decision to attend.
Connect Them With Each Other Beforehand
The more students feel like they are already part of your community before attending, the less likely they’ll get cold feet and opt out. If they’ve already met a student or a handful of potential classmates who know their name and are excited to meet them, it can make the whole prospect of moving away from home to a new and strange place easier.
One of the easiest and best ways to do this is to create a Facebook group specifically for incoming students. You can make this group private and invite-only to ensure only incoming students are part of it. This is what schools like Santa Clara University and College of Charleston (along with many others) have done.
This is a valuable, easy, and low-stakes way to allow people to meet future classmates. And It’s a great way to help students realize that they’re not alone—they’re one of many others who are just as equally excited and nervous to start this next chapter of their lives.
Remember, though, to consistently highlight these groups throughout your communications with students and to point out different aspects of why they should join. You might specifically invite students to join in conjunction with your email about signing up for residence halls to encourage them to find a roommate in the group. You might encourage students to join if you’re highlighting different intramural clubs that are available on campus, inviting them to find fellow teammates.
In short, aside from simply highlighting these community bonding groups, encourage students to join for specific reasons. This can help them see why joining a group like this, beyond just getting to know their classmates, can help them address actual needs (finding a roommate, connecting specifically with STEM majors, connecting to those with similarly diverse backgrounds, etc.).
Continue to Highlight the Value of Financial Aid
While many students have already been awarded their financial aid (which has helped spur their decision to deposit or not), sometimes other scholarships or award opportunities become available over the summer. Additionally, students may still not know exactly how they’re going to pay for school. It’s important to account for this continuing to share resources and tips for helping them pay for school. For example, are there still departmental scholarships that would be relevant to a group of students with a certain pre-major? If so, definitely communicate this to them.
What about campus jobs? Students may be interested in working for your school to help pay for college. Makes sure to highlight all campus jobs and/or work-study opportunities when you can, and tell students who have submitted their deposit how they can get a head start on applying for these types of positions.
And, although students can find out a lot about taking out loans online, you may want to provide targeted emails detailing strategies for using loans to pay for school. This can especially be valuable to first-gen students, who may not know how to begin considering such options or have people in their lives to help them think through such decisions. Of course, you’ll always want to include CTAs in your communication to encourage students to get in touch with a counselor for personalized help and support.
The team at Point Loma Nazarene University has also developed a comprehensive PDF titled “All Things Financial” for just this purpose. Something like this can both be emailed in its entirety to students or broken down into separate, shorter emails (again, many students are more willing to read concise and targeted emails).
And don’t forget to let them know that, even if certain aid isn’t available for their first year, they can still always pursue options their second, third, and/or fourth years. The more you can help students realize there are several ways to pay for college over their entire experience the better.
It might be tempting to assume that because students have deposited that they’ve figured out the financial aspect of making college work for them. Yes, some have. But others may only have a general idea. And some may even be completely unsure how they’re going to pay for it. By reminding students that there are many options available, you can help ease some of their concerns and turn their deposit into actual enrollment.
