UD Enrolls CD Program In August, we reported on the University of Dayton’s customized e-newsletter efforts to reach alumni (“E-News Is Good News,” page 45). Now the school is working on its relationships with prospective freshmen.
This fall the school mailed approximately 20,000 college-bound high school seniors a CD-ROM allowing them fast access to UD’s Web site (admission.udayton.edu). As students click on topics, software from PortCD.com tracks their areas of interest and returns that data to UD, allowing recruiters to follow up with e-mail and snail-mail customized to a student’s particular academic needs.
“Establishing and maintaining a relationship with a prospective student during the fall decision-making time is critical to our efforts in increasing our applicant pool,” notes Chris Munoz, associate provost for enrollment management at UD.
The goal is to get students to apply online. Applications received online require no additional data entry, which means the information gets into the system quicker and allows the university to be more efficient in the enrollment process, says Munoz. At UD this year, 4,282 (57%) of the school’s record 7,494 applicants applied for free through the Web site. The school accepted 5,949 freshmen this fall, 1,773 of whom enrolled. Overall, 6,600 undergraduates and 4,500 grad students attend UD, the 10th-largest Catholic university in the United States.
Munoz says the school also wants to increase traffic to its Web site, which features content customized to students and alumni who register. The site allows applicants to check the status of their paperwork online (whether transcripts were received, financial aid estimates, etc.), as well as view content personalized to their areas of interest, such as fraternities or sororities, career planning or athletics.
As the school is the first in the country to utilize the PortCD technology and is partnering with the company on this initiative, Munoz says the financial investment is low compared to the potential gains: increasing the size of the applicant pool and making prospects aware of what the university has to offer.
