For Keene State’s administration, enrollment is more than just a number. It’s several numbers and factors that culminate into a student body.
According to Director of Admissions Peg Richmond, there are three key markers for enrollment – R1, R2, and R3. R1 is ten days after registration, R2 is 20 days after registration, and R3 is 30 days after registration. In the college’s annual factbook, the number of enrolled listed is the R3 number. The reason for this being that after 30 days, the dropoff rate for students drastically decreases, according to Richmond. “At 30 days we are 99.9 percent there of what that class is going to look like for the rest of that year.”
One piece of the puzzle regarding enrollment is participating in campus tours. According to Richmond, historically there has been a correlation between going on a campus tour and enrolling at Keene State. In terms of what students ask when college searching, Richmond said there are some basic questions during ‘window shopping’. “Students want to know if they’ll be in a rural area or a more urban area, how far away from home they’ll be, and the size of the institution.” Richmond stated that in these early stages there aren’t a lot of questions that are major-related.
Richmond said that overall she sees this academic year as a success. “Everything I do is strategic and based on the data, but we can’t forget that that’s a very small piece of why we’re enrolling this class… it’s because of how people jumped in and how they shared this community with prospective students and how they felt coming in,” she explained.
Director of Marketing Sarah Kossayda, who joined the role in early March, said the Spring’s marketing initiatives may not have had a large impact on this year’s class, but there are some elements that may have helped student’s decisions on whether to attend Keene State. “We have e-mail campaigns, social media, all of the work that comes out of Casey Justice’s office with Admitted Students Day and Orientation,” she said.
“We shifted away from saying ‘Send us your deposit’, it was more like ‘Hey, do you have any questions and what can we help you with?’” Kossayda said, noting the shift in tone to a more friendly approach in emailing.
“We had great response rates to all of those,” she noted.
Kossayda explained that, since the college’s shift from using a marketing agency to an in-house process in Dec. 2022, they have gained access to numbers and insights that they did not have before.
“This will be the first-year we’ll have full insight into the enrollment cycle… now that we’re handling it in-house we can see those conversion rates at every step,” she explained.
Another benefit of shifting to an in-house process is customization in advertising. “When we outsourced, they would write the emails for us and we would look at them, but it was pretty hard to differentiate one college from another,” she said.
In terms of physical changes, Kossayda said that the color palette of marketing materials was ‘refreshed’, as well as changing banners along Appian Way and the L.P. Young Student Center. “We’re trying to drive people to campus and when they come to campus we want the brand to reflect what we’re saying we are, and looking at where we can have a high visual impact,” she said.
Last academic year’s R3 number was 709 for first-years and 2,708 undergraduates, according to KSC’s 2022 Factbook. This academic year’s R1 number is 741 first-year students, with 2,696 total undergraduate students. According to Vice President of Enrollment and Student Engagement MB Lufkin, those numbers represent a slight increase over last year’s R1 number, amounting to just shy of 3%.
What’s called ‘the melting period’ starts after registration; this is traditionally the period in which students tend to drop off in notable numbers.
“We start our anti-melt activities really in the spring. Orientation is an anti-melt activity… we had a 98% attendance rate so everyone that registered for orientation showed up for orientation,” Lufkin said.
In addition, Lufkin noted that flyers were mailed to students, as well as hand-written letters from alumni to incoming first-year students.
Lufkin said that the numbers represent a success for the college, noting that maintaining 2022-2023 academic year enrollment numbers was the goal for this year. “Traditionally between R1 and R3 we have less than a 2 percent melt, so if we can maintain and make sure students feel supported and welcome we’ll reach our budget number.”
“We’re always trying to get closer to that 800 number [of first-year students], but the competition in this landscape is really tough for us, so we continue to look at all the ways that we can attract students to come to Keene and make sure they feel welcome here,” she explained.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
