While your Admission Office is busy determining who will receive a coveted invitation to attend your school in the 2016-2017 academic year, it’s time to start thinking about how you will convince those accepted students to attend your school. Accepted Student Days are a great way to continue to court those families you’ve determined are mission-appropriate by welcoming them to your campus for a special, accepted-students-only reception, encouraging them to build relationships with current families and faculty.
Make your Accepted Student Day an unforgettable event and a wonderful recruitment tool with these seven tips.
- Prepare dossiers and “cheat sheets” for event volunteers on accepted students who will be attending Accepted Student Day. These sheets should contain the student’s picture, his/her name, and perhaps a “fun fact” or two to help the volunteer appeal to the student’s interest and personalize the conversation. At the very least, showing the volunteers the students’ faces will help them feel more familiar and ease potential awkwardness.
- Keep speeches to a minimum. No one wants to associate your Accepted Students Day with speeches or boredom. Show them how your school expresses its mission through exciting activities and events to remember, rather than trying to tell prospective families about your mission. Instead, feature (short) student performances, and get your audience to participate!
- Host an activities fair to show potential families the breadth and depth of the extracurricular choices available. Clubs are a great way to get students excited about attending, and parents will love to see the educational opportunities available to their children. For a fun way to encourage exploration, run a “passport” program, in which accepted students get their school-provided "passport" brochures stamped after visiting certain booths. If the students turn in completed passports to the Admission Office, offer them some swag, like a free t-shirt or water bottle.
- Arrange a “sample” class with a short, engaging activity. Ask your teachers to prepare a short lesson, so prospective students can experience as close to an authentic “day in the life” as possible. For an even more realistic setting, suggest that teachers make attendance for current students optional—perhaps for extra credit on a test or to make up a missed homework assignment.
- Offer separate tours for prospective parents and students. In this way, the accepted students are able to ask the questions they want the answers to without feeling pressured—accidentally or otherwise—by their parents. If the tour guides are current students, their answers to these “real life” questions will be more trusted by the prospective students than those offered by an “official” school representative. (This will require training of your student tour guides and ambassadors to ensure positive word-of-mouth marketing while still remaining honest!)
- Create and promote an event hashtag. Not every accepted student will be able to attend your Accepted Students Day, so keep everyone in the loop by organizing all Accepted Student Day-related social media updates and pictures under a special hashtag. Keep the hashtag simple, short, and snappy so that it’s memorable and easy to type on a mobile device. Get your student ambassadors in on the action and encourage them to snap selfies with accepted students to post on social media with the relevant hashtag—and to tag the accepted student in the picture with his/her social media handle!
- Make sure there’s someone on-hand to accept completed enrollment contracts and tuition deposits. With great execution and a little luck, your Accepted Student Day should help generate some commitments on the spot. Ensure that you’re ready to accept their paperwork and deposits when a parent comes to you, wanting to enroll their child then and there.
Have a great tip for an Accepted Student Day? Share with your fellow Admission Directors in the comment section below, or tweet your tip using #ISMAdvance.
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for Admission Directors Vol. 12 No. 7 "Welcome!" Now What? —What You Send to Accepted Students
The Source for Admission Directors Vol. 13 No. 4 Current Families Welcome, Retain New Students
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 39 No. 2 Full Disclosure of Non-Tuition Expectations During Admission
I&P Vol. 38 No. 2 Who Is Responsible for Enrollment Management?
I&P Vol. 37 No. 13 The Student's Role in Re-recruitment
