This College Wants Students to Commit Soon. So It’s Running an ‘Early Deposit Awards Program.’

Albion College is giving away prizes, including free room and board for a semester, to encourage accepted applicants to commit within the next few weeks. To enter what the college has called the “Early Deposit Sweepstakes,” a student must commit by March 6 — nearly two months before the national deposit deadline.

“This is an engaging way for students who have us at the top of their list to take that next step,” Hernan Bucheli, Albion’s vice president for enrollment management, said on Tuesday. “We thought it would be fun, so we’re trying it out.”

Welcome to the freewheeling, incentive-laden, “Act Now!” era of college admissions. As The Chronicle describes in an in-depth article this week, the 2019-20 enrollment cycle marks a new phase in student recruitment. Colleges are embracing more aggressive tactics, and the official rules of competition have changed. Last fall, under pressure from the Justice Department, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, known as NACAC, deleted portions of its ethics code that federal investigators deemed “anticompetitive.” Because of the department’s inquiry, there’s a moratorium on enforcing the code’s remaining guidelines.

Now, some colleges are experimenting with bolder marketing strategies, disrupting the admissions timeline, and toppling long-held norms. Rejoice, or mourn, accordingly.

Albion, a private liberal-arts college in Michigan, started promoting its early-deposit incentive at the beginning of February, sending emails and postcards to all accepted applicants. As of late last week, the college’s homepage featured a colorful banner advertising the coming drawing. “Our Early deposit sweepstakes ends soon,” the message said, “so make sure you are in the running.”

Now, that banner ad is gone. That’s because, Bucheli said, “we’re calling it an awards program, not a sweepstakes — it’s more indicative of what we’re trying to accomplish.” To give students considering the college some “value added” encouragement to go ahead and choose it.

According to a description of the “Early Deposit Awards Program” on Albion’s website, each student who meets the March 6 deadline will be entered into a drawing for one of 12 “awards.” One lucky student will win free room and board for a semester, and another will have the cost of a meal plan ($3,150) paid for a semester. Five contestants will each get $250 for textbooks, and five will have their vehicle-registration fees covered for one year.

But wait, there’s another incentive to commit sooner rather than later. The charge for students who pay an “early enrollment deposit” on or before April 1 is $250. After that, the fee increases to $350.

On some campuses, enrollment leaders acknowledge that the recent demise of NACAC’s ethics code had prompted them to adopt strategies that previously would’ve been a no-no. But the shelved guidelines, Bucheli insisted, did not inspire Albion’s experiment. When asked if the timing was purely coincidental, he said: “It’s serendipitous, for sure.”

Adjectives aside, Albion’s “Early Deposit Awards Program” would run afoul of existing portions of NACAC’s ethics code, according to two admissions officials who know the document inside out. The college’s strategy exemplifies a practice that the guidelines were meant to deter: Incentivizing early commitments with offers that expire before May 1.

That’s the National Candidates Reply Date, by which applicants must tell their chosen college that they’re coming. NACAC has long discouraged enticements to submit a deposit before May 1, stating that regular-decision applicants must have until then to weigh their admission and financial-aid offers. Some students don’t need all that time to reach a decision; others absolutely do.

Bucheli said he and his colleagues had considered the ethical implications of the early-deposit campaign before promoting it: “We wanted to make sure students had an out.” That is, to change their minds without financial penalty. So the description of the program includes the following: “Participation in this drawing is non-binding and your enrollment deposit is refundable prior to May 1.”

Though Bucheli described the drawing as a means of making Albion more affordable for some students, the strategy, of course, has potential benefits for the college, too. The more commitments an institution nails down early, the better its chance of hitting enrollment and revenue targets later on. Though a deposit certainly doesn’t guarantee enrollment, it often marks the end of the competition to win the heart of a given applicant.

For many small, private colleges, student recruitment is an increasingly fraught exercise. Albion, with its $60,000 annual sticker price, lies in south-central Michigan, a state with a shrinking number of high-school graduates that was hit especially hard by the recession. In 2014, Albion’s enrollment fell to fewer than 1,300 students, down from a peak of nearly 2,000 in 2005, according to a 2019 article in the Battle Creek Enquirer.

Over the last several years, Albion has cast a wider net for applicants, stepped up fund raising, and reduced its spending deficit. In the fall of 2018 the college’s full-time enrollment was 1,509. Last year it was 1,455.

This fall Albion plans to enroll approximately 440 freshmen. No newfangled tactic can guarantee that the college will meet that goal. But Bucheli thinks the Early Deposit Awards Program can help expedite inevitable commitments to the college, which already gets 30 to 50 percent of its deposits well before May 1 rolls around.

So far, there’s no way to gauge the impact of the strategy. Parents seem to like it, Bucheli said, and no one has complained. With the deadline for the drawing still a few weeks off, one or two deposits are trickling in each day.

Wait, did you know that Albion’s early-deposit prizes are taxable? The college says so online. So the government will get a chunk of that $250 award for textbooks.

In any case, incentive-based campaigns like Albion’s could become commonplace in admissions. Then again, the whole thing might soon fade from memory like an expired coupon.

Either way, Bucheli thinks it’s important to innovate. Sure, enrolling a class can be an ultracompetitive, nerve-fraying experience. “But if you’re not having fun,” he said, “then what are you doing?”