How the U. of Maine Attracted More Students From Out of State

The University of Maine at Orono was looking to increase its enrollment. And like many public colleges around the country, it especially wanted to bring in more out-of-state students.

But before Joel Wincowski came in as interim vice president for enrollment management, in August, Maine was relying on standard solutions from consultants to guide pricing and branding efforts, he says. Mr. Wincowski, a former enrollment manager now working at a firm that places interim higher-education leaders (his previous stints include St. Mary’s College of Maryland), decided to do something different. With May 1, the traditional college-decision deadline, behind him, Mr. Wincowski can now say that his approach worked.

The university started a program called “Flagship Match.” Maine offered incoming students from six states an out-of-state education for the sticker price of tuition and fees at their home state’s public flagship, if those students’ grades and test scores cleared a certain bar. Students from other states who met the standards would get a flat discount of $13,200. And out-of-state students with lower grades and scores would still get a $9,000 discount. Maine’s out-of-state rate for tuition and fees is $29,480.

The match was offered to students with at least a 3.0 grade-point average and 1050 in combined mathematics and critical-reading scores on the SAT who hailed from these states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Those states were chosen with care, Mr. Wincowski says. In order for the strategy to work out financially, the target states’ flagships must have relatively high in-state tuition and fees, he says. That consideration ruled out others, like Maryland and New York, where tuition is lower.

The program was meant to be more than a pricing strategy. Mr. Wincowski thinks that it will also help Maine — which has rebranded itself with a “Define Tomorrow” campaign since he arrived — be seen in the same light as the better-known flagships whose tuition it is matching. “Putting our name out there with them automatically builds our image,” he says.

So how did it work out? The university saw a 24-percent increase in out-of-state applications. When the dust settled after May 1, Maine stood to bring in 883 students from the six match states, 325 more than came from them last year. The university has commitments from 2,447 incoming freshmen over all, a number Mr. Wincowski expects to grow as the last of the on-time deposits make their way in. That’s up 22 percent from May 1 of last year.

Making a Difference

One place where the university’s pitch seems to have resonated is Innovation Academy Charter School, in Tyngsborough, Mass. The school is small, with 76 seniors graduating this year, says Danny Barr, director of college counseling there. Four of them are heading to the University of Maine this fall, he says. That ties Maine with the University of Massachusetts at Lowell for taking the second-greatest number of the school’s seniors, Mr. Barr says, behind the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which is taking seven.

Mr. Barr heard about the Flagship Match program at a counselor event, and used it in his college-night presentation to families as an example of how a college’s sticker price could be quite different from a particular student’s bottom line.

The University of Maine already had a reputation for giving more-generous merit aid than other public universities in the region, Mr. Barr says. But its previous approach, he says, required students to have higher test scores than are required for the Flagship Match. That makes a real difference for students at a school like his, which has a project-based curriculum and puts less emphasis on standardized tests.

The grades and test scores that get students the full match at Maine aren’t high enough to get them into UMass, says Mr. Barr, who worked in its admissions office earlier in his career. That, he says, allows Maine to position itself as a good public option for a broader group of students.

And tying prices at Maine to other flagships’ in-state tuition makes a certain amount of sense. At least some families have a good sense of what UMass charges, Mr. Barr says, and some of them have decided that “we can only afford in-state.”

While Maine is matching UMass’s in-state tuition and fees, many Massachusetts students pay less than that sticker price after taking grants and scholarships into account. That observation provided some comfort to James Roche, UMass’s associate provost for enrollment management, who says he learned about the match program “about 30 seconds after the first email went out” and spent some time poking around Maine’s website when he did. UMass, he is convinced, remains a more affordable option for many residents.

UMass is also on track for a good year in enrollment, Mr. Roche says, and if the Flagship Match had any effect on it, “as best we can tell, it’s very little.” Still, Mr. Roche plans to keep an eye on it, because it’s “too soon to tell the full impact.”

Mr. Wincowski would agree. The program was announced pretty late in this year’s admissions cycle, so some students had already made up their minds. Given that and the pattern in inquiries from juniors in the match states — those are up 45 percent — he expects even better results next year. And he’s planning to extend the program to a few more states: California, Illinois, and maybe Rhode Island.

Beckie Supiano writes about college affordability, the job market for new graduates, and professional schools, among other things. Follow her on Twitter @becksup, or drop her a line at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.