Enrollment Management professionals love data. High school student demographics including race, ethnicity, geographic location, standardized test scores, etc. are all part of a strategic enrollment management toolkit. Unfortunately, the Princeton Review had a recent long-term information breach of that same sort of information that is so often of interest to higher education enrollment management divisions:

The Princeton Review, the test-preparatory firm, accidentally published the personal data and standardized test scores of tens of thousands of Florida students on its Web site, where they were available for seven weeks.

One file on the site contained information on about 34,000 students in the public schools in Sarasota, Fla., where the Princeton Review was hired to build an online tool to help the county measure students’ academic progress. The file included the students’ birthdays and ethnicities, whether they had learning disabilities, whether English was their second language, and their level of performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which is given to students in grades 3 to 11.

Oops.

The University of Oregon is steering hundreds of freshmen to off-campus apartments next fall because its dorms lack sufficient room to handle an unexpected surge of enrollment.

The university expects 3,800 freshmen next fall, a 400-student increase, which will exceed dormitory space and force the university to provide more classes and services.

Some parents are anxious, angry and disappointed, and some students have chosen to go elsewhere because of the housing shortage, says Robin Holmes, vice president for student affairs.

Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon wants to know if you are a Chemeketa scholar…because if you qualify, Chemeketa will give you a full tuition scholarship for 2 years!

Are you a Chemeketa scholar?

Are you graduating from high school this academic year?
Do you currently have a cumulative, unweighted GPA of 3.5 or better (as of 7th semester grades)?
Do you live in the Chemeketa service district?

Are you willing to:

Begin your college career the fall after you graduate high school?
Enroll in 12 or more credits per term?
Commit to maintaining at least a 3.25 GPA in your Chemeketa classes?

Then you’re a Chemeketa scholar

Chemeketa Scholars qualify for

* A full tuition scholarship for up to two years.
* Placement in an on-campus, paid position such as student ambassador, peer advisor, tutor, or mentor. Job placement not guaranteed. Positions are limited.

I’m currently subscribed to 104 RSS feeds. My bloglines is sometimes a bit overwhelming as I peruse content from around the blogosphere. One of the blogs that I always read, no matter how busy I am, is the MIT Admissions Blog(s). The site is written by several MIT students and staffers. I love the breadth and depth of the content on the MIT Admissions Blog. Blog posts are full of student stories, campus and event photographs, and important procedural processes.

In my opinion, it’s the premier admissions blog in the United States in terms of content, diversity of bloggers, comments, and overall aesthetics. A Google search for “admissions blog” places the MIT Admissions blog in the 4th spot on the results page, just below the Oregon State University Admissions blog.

A recent post on the MIT Admissions blog on a talk by Noam Chomsky contains a wonderful mix of text and photographs.

Ben Jones, the MIT Director of Communications, even posted his own, custom made Lolz Catz post!

I think this student-written post on Application Cycles is a wonderful example of informing students about application policies while simultaneously telling a narrative of what it’s like to be a student at MIT.

The MIT Admissions Office has set the admissions blogging bar at a high level. It’s a wonderfully constructed group blog that is impressive within and outside of the admissions blogging context.

The 2007 batch of first-year medical students at the University of Missouri-Columbia is the least racially diverse in recent history.

We are constantly concerned and aware if we don’t mirror the population of the state, and we just keep working at it,” William Crist, dean of the medical school, said. “Fortunately, in big systems we try to view how well we’re doing not by a single class. You look at four-year periods because by chance you can get an unlucky year.”

Dear Dr. Crist, “chance” and “luck” have nothing to do with the intentional recruitment and support of students of color. Citing that the reason that Black enrollment is low because of the number of medical school applications by Black students does not answer the question of “why” the number of applicants is low. Maybe you could ask why the number of white student applications is so high? Is it luck? Perhaps it is because the system is biased towards white students…?

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Declining Enrollment:
Eastern Oregon University is in trouble. With enrollment and finance on the decline, officials have created a “strategic plan that includes enrollment management, recruitment and transfer improvements.”

Student applications are down 41 percent this fall compared with two years ago. Tuition revenue for the university dropped $1.48 million below its expectations for this year; it projects an additional $847,000 decline in tuition revenue for 2007-08. With fewer students, the school is also failing to fill its residence halls, which means it must pay a bigger share of dorm debt.

Perhaps it is time for Eastern Oregon University to contact some strategic enrollment management consultants?

Admissions:
Marilee Jones, the Dean of Admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), resigned from her post today “after it was confirmed that she had ‘misrepresented her academic degrees to the Institute,’ Dean for Undergraduate Education Daniel E. Hastings announced in an e-mail to the MIT community today.”

According to Jones, “I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to MIT 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since.”

Hastings stated that “the process of admitting the incoming class continues without disruption.”

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Rankings:
A lot of enrollment management administrators ponder the effects of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings report. The report can lead to a lot of free publicity for those schools that are fortunate enough to be ranked by U.S News.

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Admissions 2.0:
Dan and Blake will be facilitating a web conference in April (Tuesday, 4/24/07) entitled, “Getting Started with Search Engine Optimization in Admissions”

Admissions directors, enrollment managers, marketers, and web editors will leave this web conference with cost-effective ideas on how to make their admissions websites more search engine-friendly and easier for prospective students to find. Participants will explore principles of search engine optimization and web analytics and develop an understanding of how to use these tools to make informed decisions on the content and formatting of their admissions websites.

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Enroll-A-Tron 3042:
In what appears to be the first viral video aimed at Enrollment Management Directors / Admissions Directors, Frank Meester debuts the “Enroll-A-Tron 3042.” The device is
guaranteed to help enrollment management professionals recruit and retain students at an amazing 100% retention rate. The video is pretty funny and it will be interesting to see if enrollment management folks find humor in a 15 billion dollar, ductwork/old server-based, grant-funded, device

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