In the summer, what’s true of Popsicles is also true of freshman classes: A little melt is fine, but too much can cause a real mess.
Each year, admissions officers know that a small percentage of admitted applicants who sent deposits will not show up. The phenomenon, known as “summer melt,” has many causes. Students might change their plans because they suddenly get off their first-choice college’s waiting list—or because they opt to spend a year caring for penguins in Antarctica. Sometimes the arrival of the tuition bill convinces a family that it cannot afford a particular college after all.
Too many no-shows can have costly consequences for colleges, especially small, tuition-dependent institutions. This year the unstable economy prompted many admissions officers to brace for more attrition than usual. To minimize summer melt—and to ease the transition to campus—some colleges are developing new ways to engage admitted students during the dog days.
At Lawrence University, in Wisconsin, students who work in the admissions office usually call prospective applicants during the summer. This year, however, the students are also calling all 360 incoming freshmen, just to say hello and ask whether they have any questions about the months ahead.
Meanwhile, Lawrence’s admissions counselors have been conducting quirky e-mail surveys of incoming freshmen since late May. They asked students to name their favorite songs and sports, and to share their nicknames (“Creep” and “Debbielicious” were two memorable answers). There have also been weightier questions, like, “What is the greatest unanswered question?” The counselors post the responses on the university’s admissions blog.
Ken Anselment, Lawrence’s director of admissions, believes that even such small connections build a crucial sense of community. “Recruitment does not stop at the point of deposit—it never has,” he says. “But it’s never been more clear that recruitment is a perpetual activity. Colleges are going to be competing with each other even more to make sure that students are happy about their decisions.”
‘Students Expect More’
Lawrence typically loses about 5 percent of its freshman class over the summer. So far the university’s melt is less than it was last year.
The same is true at Wabash College, in Indiana, which had 255 deposits (for an expected class of 250) as of mid-July. This spring the college enhanced its outreach to admitted students, offering more one-on-one financial-aid counseling. The challenge was to engage students early in the summer, says Chip Timmons, the college’s associate director of admissions.
To that end, Wabash retired the binder of forms it had long mailed to freshmen. Instead the students received a letter directing them to an online “summer checklist,” which includes links to forms and deadlines for housing selections and freshman seminars.
Besides saving paper, the change allowed Wabash to move up its deadlines. In turn the college got an earlier read on how its class was shaping up (missed deadlines are often a sign that a student is wavering). “This let us know much earlier who we needed to reach out to,” says Mr. Timmons. And when it was clear that some students had changed their minds, the office was able to go to its waiting list in early June, about a month earlier than last year.
This summer the college’s state alumni association sent “Class of 2013" T-shirts to each freshman. Students were encouraged to send a photograph of themselves wearing the shirt to the admissions office, which posts each image on its Web site. And for the first time, Wabash’s national alumni association plans to send a welcome letter to freshmen, a draft of which describes how they are about to become “part of a fabric.”
Graduates of Clark University, in Massachusetts, are also doing more to welcome incoming students. Two years ago, the admissions office turned its “anti-melt receptions” over to alumni after determining that new students wanted to meet more of them. Each summer Clark graduates throughout the nation hold about a dozen gatherings for freshmen and alumni.
“Students expect more in terms of communication now,” says Tricia L. Uber, Clark’s director of admissions. “This gives them a connection between their home and their future home.”
Because many teenagers are used to experiencing community online, colleges use the Web to engage new students over the summer. Duke University’s Summer Transition Series, for instance, lets students communicate with campus officials about specific topics, such as housing and academic advising, during online chats.
At Michigan Technological University, incoming students get access to the Husky Hub, which allows them to communicate with other students through an in-house social-networking site. Since September members of this fall’s freshman class have made nearly 48,000 “shouts” (like Facebook “wall” posts), uploaded 1,900 images, and written about 500 blog entries.
The site allows rising freshmen to ask current students about what to expect on move-in day, or about what banks are near the campus. The admissions office is also holding a series of online chats among current and soon-to-be students, including an 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. chat each day during the week before orientation.
Last week a freshman sent Allison A. Carter, the university’s director of admissions, a private message through Husky Hub. He was worried about his roommate —and about whether he would have his own bathroom. “These private chats are a great way we help students who have concerns and would not normally give us a call or send an e-mail,” Ms. Carter says.
‘Keep Them Excited’
Despite the many dire predictions about this summer’s melt, some colleges have neither done anything differently nor seen an unusually high number of withdrawals. Take Pitzer College, in California, which lost about five students in May, but none since then. “That really is truly remarkable—at least for us,” Angel B. Perez, the college’s director of admission, writes in an e-mail message.
Melt, in other words, can be just as mysterious as other aspects of admissions. Officials at Allegheny College, in Pennsylvania, expected increased melt this year and considered new strategies to prevent it. So far, however, Allegheny has not seen fit to use many of those ideas. Only 15 freshmen have withdrawn, leaving the college with 600 deposits, well above its goal of 560.
Nonetheless, Allegheny has made greater use of Twitter to communicate with incoming freshmen. It has also added some videos for freshmen to its Web site (“Class Registration: Demystified” includes interviews with students and professors, as well as some memorable guitar licks).
“The important thing is to keep them excited,” says W. Scott Friedhoff, the college’s vice president for enrollment and communications. “Students get scared, and when anxiety builds, second-guessing starts to happen.”
Up the road at Dickinson College, officials worried about melt after seeing a 5-percent decline in applications, followed by several early-decision withdrawals. So each Wednesday, the college holds a meeting of the “anti-melt committee,” which includes representatives from enrollment, housing, student affairs, athletics, and other departments. The group coordinates a weekly e-mail “macro message” to all incoming students, as well as more personalized “micro messages” concerning, say, questions about housing or travel.
Dickinson, which saw deeper financial need among students in this year’s admitted pool, has already lost nearly 7 percent of its freshman class—the total percentage lost by the end of last summer. “The need for net tuition revenue has never been greater,” says Stephanie Balmer, the college’s vice president for enrollment and communications. “So there’s much more interest across the academy in preserving the class.”
In the long run, a sound melt-reduction strategy may prove to be an early investment in retention. The University of Dayton has formed a partnership with a company called InsideTrack to provide personal “success coaches” to all admitted students throughout their first semester.
Yet the program starts months before students get to tape posters to their dorm-room walls. After sending a deposit in the spring, each freshman gets a call from a coach, who asks about his or her goals and answers questions about choosing classes, finding activities, and getting jobs. The coaches also help students deal with personal issues, like homesickness and procrastination, and often direct them to appropriate campus services.
“During the summer, there’s a lot of silence from colleges,” says Sundar Kumarasamy, Dayton’s vice president for enrollment management. “So we asked: In preparing students for the transition, why wait for them to come?”