Regardless of the type of institution (large or small, public or private) all enrollment management operations have one thing in common—the need to maintain, monitor, analyze and compare critical metrics in order to avoid surprises, make mid-course corrections, and adjust strategies based on results.
Most institutions have found that it isn’t easy to pull the type of data needed for effective management of enrollments and aid budgets out of transaction-oriented student systems. That is why The College of Saint Rose (CSR) opted to use SKORE, a web-based enrollment management data warehouse and reporting tool available through Scannell & Kurz. As Mary Grondahl, Vice President for Enrollment Management at CSR, shares, “With SKORE, we were able to blend our admissions and financial aid data and track our progress toward net tuition revenue goals throughout the recruitment cycle. Making date-to-date comparisons to the prior year further facilitated our ability to predict final outcomes. SKORE helped us hone in on the gaps in our admit pools and devise follow-up strategies to help us close gaps, reach out to discrete groups in our pool, etc. SKORE has really changed how we do business – and all for the better.”
One of the reports used frequently during the recruitment cycle is the financial aid matrix report, which allows institutions to track financial aid offers for admits and enrollees by quality and need levels. “Our SKORE reports have helped us immeasurably in this financial aid packaging cycle. The SKORE tool provides easy access to data and reports that give us absolute confidence that we are executing our packaging strategy with precision,” explains Ms. Grondahl.
Sample Financial Aid Matrix Report
Sample Dashboard Report
Periodically running the enrollment dashboard report also allows institutions to track their progress toward goals for class size and profile. A sample of this report can be seen below.
Yield Reports
At year end, institutions are typically most interested in the yield report which facilitates an examination of trends in yield rates by subpopulation.
In addition, the net tuition revenue by subpopulation report helps institutions understand the “cost” of target populations.
Finally, examining yield rates by need and grant for different quality levels, academic program areas, etc., can help colleges make adjustments to financial aid awarding strategies based on year end results.
Because SKORE is flexible and highly customizable, you can run any of the reports for the overall population, or for any specific subpopulations of interest. You can also easily group continuous variables (like level of unmet need) into categories to generate more meaningful summary results. As an example the screen shot below shows how simple it is to set up quality group categories. You simply highlight the cells in the table to indicate which GPA and test score categories should be in each group.
A single license allows multiple staff members to access SKORE simultaneously, and the software is accessible from any computer with a high-speed Internet connection.
Ms. Grondahl finishes, “SKORE is just what we need and more for planning and executing our tactics efficiently and productively. I don’t know how we operated without it.”
For more information please see our SKORE page. To schedule a personalized SKORE WebEx demonstration, please contact our office directly by calling 585-381-1120 or contact us through our website.
