Table of Contents:
In today’s higher education landscape, traditional marketing strategies—built on demographics, test scores, and zip codes—no longer provide the depth needed to engage and convert modern students. While demographics tell us who and where—they don’t tell us why.
That’s where Personality Science comes in. Personality Science is what converts a traditional higher ed branding approach to an advanced, personalized, and predictive communication model by answering the why behind student behaviors.
At its core, Personality Science is about humanizing your brand and understanding your students through valuable psychographic (personality-based) data and insights. Information you cannot buy from a data aggregator or any other source. Instead, it must be uncovered from within your institution and by your campus community. Once you’ve acquired it, this Personality Science delivers a strategic, research-driven way to connect with students, alumni, faculty, and other stakeholders in an authentic, focused, and enduring way. And most importantly, in a way that will maximize conversion with your audiences.
Psychographic Personality Science is the foundation for a differentiated, resilient higher education brand that builds true affinity and trust.
Research & Human Psychology
What is a brand? This ubiquitous term we all seem to know yet struggle to find. Put simply, your brand is your reputation. It’s perception. Ironically, you don’t decide your brand value—everybody else does. As brand strategists and managers, our job is to assess, align, and express your brand authentically, giving you the best chance of developing an accurate reputation in the hearts and minds of prospective students and your stakeholders. A brand is only as strong as its ability to connect. And connection isn’t just about the “what”—it’s about the “why.”
The fundamental question that Carnegie asks in all of our work is: Who are you?
The answer to this question—both on behalf of entire institutions and student populations—unlocks a wealth of insights that can and should guide an organization’s entire marketing and brand communication.
Carnegie’s Personality Science is rooted in:
- Psychographic Research: Demographics provide a valuable starting point. They tell us what behaviors and decisions a household or person has made; they do not, however, tell us “why” a person made those decisions. What motivated someone? What’s their personality? What drives them? This information is exponentially more valuable in the marketing and branding continuum because once we know what a population is motivated by, we know how to personalize and deliver targeted messages that are much more effective.
- Psychology and Validity: Psychographics have significant predictive value—especially when it comes to understanding what content a person resonates with and why they make behavioral changes. Carnegie knows this well through our many nationwide studies testing our archetypal personality model, and understanding its predictive value in preferences of all sorts—communication preferences, educational preferences, hobbies, interests, and beyond. Of course, the predictive power of human personality has been studied for decades, with a sort of renaissance in the 1960s. See works like “The Power of Personality” and the comparative validity of personality traits, by Brent W. Roberts and team in 2007, for example. In fact, as I presented at the Carnegie Conference in 2024, we know that a person’s personality provides a full 15% predictive edge for marketers. Meaning if we know about a person’s core personality, we have a 15% better chance of knowing which message framing or expression style will appeal to them most. By contrast, many demographic factors have less than 1% predictive value in determining how a message should be crafted to drive engagement.
When institutions understand the psychology behind decisions, they can shape branding, messaging, and engagement strategies that truly resonate. This is how you build an effective and accurate brand that increases conversion and supports retention.
The Four Pillars of Brand Building
Personality Science isn’t just a concept—it’s a structured approach that informs every aspect of higher ed brand-building. At Carnegie, we integrate it through four key pillars:
1. Research: The Foundation of Brand Identity
Building an authentic brand starts with in-depth research rooted in both institutional identity and psychographic insights. At Carnegie, we begin by uncovering the “who” of a brand—the motivations, values, and personality drivers that define an institution’s brand identity. Because people intrinsically understand human personality, defining a brand through archetypes makes it immediately relatable and recognizable.
That’s why, over 15 years ago, Carnegie developed nine archetypes—a framework that has since been rigorously tested, validated, and applied to institutions across the country and internationally. Once the institution’s identity has been established, we use the same psychographic framework to understand the students.
Rather than focusing solely on metrics like GPA, we prioritize what motivates students psychologically—the values, aspirations, and decision-making factors that drive their engagement. At Carnegie, we uncover these insights through in-depth research tailored to each institution’s unique student population.
2. Strategy: A Common Language for Brand Adoption
Once the core research has been conducted, the next step is strategic alignment. Institutions need a shared understanding of their brand personality—one that guides marketing, enrollment, and communications teams in unison. At Carnegie, a university’s brand personality is the basis for its brand position and story. The answer to “Who are you?” aligns everything.
Example: Think for a moment about how much harder it is to develop a brand strategy for a university than for a commercial product. Universities are complex organizations with multiple audiences—prospective students, current students, faculty, and alumni—each with their own perceptions and expectations. In order to develop a common language for the institution to adopt, stakeholders must be part of defining the brand and shaping the strategy. At Carnegie, the process of developing a brand strategy is as much the product as the strategy itself.
3. Activation: A Roadmap for Engagement
Research and strategy must be translated into action and deployed across the campus community. Personality Science provides institutions with a clear roadmap for student engagement, helping them target the right students with the right message at the right time. We ensure that brands are activated through media planning, message trainings, and hands-on support long after the foundational work is complete.
Personality Science is not a product; it’s a philosophy that should impact behavior change across the entire campus. When everyone is singing the same lyrics, the power and potency are exponential.
Example: A university struggling with fragmented messaging across departments uses Personality Science to establish a clear, consistent brand voice that resonates across all touchpoints. Don’t just write an email; write a personified email that’s on-brand and aligned with the university’s authentic personality. What’s more, write a personified email that’s purpose-built to resonate with a specific student audience! Our Personality Science will give you all of these systems and insights.
4. Expression: Humanizing the Brand Through Storytelling
The final pillar of Personality Science is expression—turning our research-backed psychographic insights into messaging, creative, and student engagement strategies that don’t just attract students but deeply resonate with them. Expression is an integrated and ongoing process involving your Search commflow, multimedia and video, your website, landing pages, SEO, social media communications, print, and beyond. In short, there’s no message that your college delivers that should not be rooted in your custom personality science.
Example: Student personas and segmentation allow institutions to speak in a way that feels deeply personal, fostering a connection that extends far beyond the application process. For example, if you knew that a group of prospective students cared deeply about compassion, kindness, and community (insights we uncover through our psychographic research), you could intentionally shape your social media content, emails, videos, etc., around those values. It’s about being authentic, showing students who you really are, and creating connections that go far beyond the typical enrollment process.
The Future of Higher Ed Branding
The heart of our work is to foster human connection. This has been our mantra for years. Why? Because everything we do at Carnegie is intended for, and built by, people. Connecting with people is not just something, in our view, it’s everything. And our Personality Science is literally designed to deliver personality clarity to schools and students and to increase connection between them. We live this mission every single day. Higher education is not just about recruitment—it’s about relationships. Personality Science gives institutions the tools to create a humanized brand strategy for every audience, every moment, and every stage of the student lifecycle.
When you understand who you are as a brand—in a way that’s intuitive, research-based, and easy to adopt—you don’t just market better. You build belonging.
Want to see Personality Science in action?
Join us for The Power of Personality: Building a Higher Education Brand that Connects, a five-part recorded webinar series exploring how Personality Science and psychographic research are transforming branding, marketing, and student engagement in higher education.