Making Sense of Admitted Student Decisions: Carnegie’s Latest Take on Admitted Student Research
Data is extremely important for any organization. It helps us make decisions and reflect on our performance, and it can also provide a road map of where to go next.
In higher education, collecting and understanding data on student behavior is at the core of strong enrollment and marketing strategies. The difference between a student who deposits and one who declines can reveal a lot about the value propositions of an institution and what could be improved for the future. Making full use of this information can be difficult without the nuance of individual responses and the context of scoring at other institutions.
At Carnegie, we’ve engaged in admitted student research for several years and have helped institutions better collect and understand data. Using research, we can parse out the differences between not just deposits and declines but variables such as in-state vs. out-of-state students, income, GPA, and much more.
Now Carnegie is ready to offer something new to keep up with the pace of the industry and offer the most methodologically sound version of Admitted Student Research (ASR) possible.
Carnegie’s new Admitted Student Research, powered by Slate
Starting in 2023, Carnegie is excited to offer a new Admitted Student Research product built completely within an institution’s Slate instance, managed by our Slate experts, and advised by our core researchers. Institutions can work with our team to select from dozens of question options to craft a survey focused on topics that mean the most to them. Carnegie will then handle survey dissemination and train key stakeholders on how to read and strategically use the outcome data.
Categories of questions available include competitive positioning, reactions to marketing, campus visit experiences, evaluations of unique value propositions, student and institutional personality, financial aid, and many more. Carnegie experts have crafted a standardized question offering that can be customized with other module questions. It can also be swapped or adjusted year-over-year for important decisions and change over time.
Key advantages of the new ASR
With decision-making, timing is everything. One reality of survey research is that it often requires a long time gap between action (deposit or decline) and reaction (survey response). With built-in Slate communication triggers, admitted students will receive their survey just a few days after submitting a decision. This means data will collect over time, and institutions can compare results in real time using a Slate results dashboard.
Many important trends are found when comparing results across myriad demographics. By connecting survey results directly to a Slate instance, any question in the survey can be compared across most variables for a student who is captured in Slate. For example, comparing where the student is from, their GPA band, their demographic background, and many other characteristics will be accessible for direct comparisons in the results dashboard.
