GPRS

Enrollment teams have calendars. Prospective students have moments.

Those aren't always the same thing.

We organize recruitment around:
Campaign dates.
Events.
Deadlines.
Application cycles.
Communication plans.

Prospective students experience something much less orderly.

A conversation with their boss makes them reconsider their career.
A friend mentions graduate school.
They get passed over for a promotion.
They see a program online.
Their company announces tuition benefits.

Suddenly, a decision that felt six months away feels relevant today.

That's why modern recruitment can't only be good at executing the enrollment calendar. It also has to be good at recognizing and responding to moments of intent.

The calendar belongs to the institution.

The moment belongs to the student.

An enrollment team can be incredibly busy without moving enough students forward.

Emails sent.
Calls made.
Events held.
Leads generated.
Website visits.
Applications started.

All useful metrics. But activity and progress aren't necessarily the same thing.

A more interesting set of questions might be:
Did the prospective student become more confident?
Did we resolve the thing preventing them from moving forward?
Did we learn something that changed how we should engage them?
Did they take a meaningful next step?

As enrollment technology gets more sophisticated, I think our measurement needs to get more sophisticated too.

Don't just measure what the institution did. Measure whether the student moved.

“We need more leads.” Maybe.

But before increasing the top of the funnel, there's another question worth asking:

What happened to the leads you already had?
How many received meaningful engagement?
How many went quiet?
How many started an application but didn't finish?
How many attended an event and never had another substantive interaction?
How many showed interest but weren't ready yet?

Lead generation is visible.

Lost opportunity inside the existing pipeline is much harder to see. And sometimes the fastest path to enrollment growth isn't creating more demand. It's doing more with the demand you've already created.

Before spending another dollar filling the funnel, take a hard look at what's leaking out of it.

An application is an event. Enrollment is a decision.

There's a lot that happens between the two.

Doubt.
Comparison.
Questions about cost.
Conversations with family.
Conversations with employers.
Another school making contact.
A week when graduate school suddenly feels like too much.
Then another moment when it feels exactly right.

That's why application generation alone doesn't tell the whole enrollment story.

The period after someone raises their hand can be every bit as important as what happened before.

Are we continuing to build confidence?
Are we answering the questions behind the questions?
Are we recognizing when someone's momentum changes?
Are we making it easy to take the next step?

Getting someone to apply matters. Helping them continue to believe they made the right decision matters too.

Marketing generates the interest. Admissions takes it from there - but what happens in between? Our latest post looks at why the marketing-to-admissions handoff matters. https://tinyurl.com/yc566wyf

📣 LIVE WEBINAR | SEPTEMBER 23 AT 1:00 PM ET

AI Is Changing Graduate Program Recruitment. Are You Ready?

GPRS President Anthony Campisi will be joined by Randell (Randy) Hernandez of the University of Washington Foster School of Business for a practical conversation about where AI fits in graduate recruitment — and how schools can prepare for what comes next.

Most admissions teams are already using AI in some capacity. But the bigger opportunity may be moving beyond individual productivity and thinking more broadly about how AI could change the way recruitment gets done.

Anthony and Randell will explore:
→ Where AI can have the greatest impact across the recruitment journey
→ What work AI should — and shouldn’t — own
→ How schools can extend staff capacity while keeping people at the center of the conversations that matter most
→ How institutions can identify practical places to begin

Randell will also bring a practitioner’s perspective from UW Foster, including what led the school to begin incorporating AI into its graduate recruitment strategy.

The webinar expands on a session Anthony and Randell originally presented at the EMBAC Western Regional Meeting and is designed for enrollment leaders across MBA, specialized master’s, executive, online, and other graduate programs.

📅 September 23
⏰ 1:00–2:00 PM ET
💻 Live Webinar
🔗 Register here: https://readyrecruit.ai/Webinar-S/

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One thing that struck us at the AACSB Associate Deans Conference last week:

There's still an enormous amount of conversation about how AI will change what happens inside the classroom. And understandably so.

But there's another AI conversation business schools need to be having:
What happens before the student ever gets into the classroom?
How do prospective students discover programs?
How are they engaged?
Who follows up?
How quickly?
How do we sustain relationships over increasingly long decision journeys?
How do already-stretched enrollment teams create more capacity?

The AI transformation of higher education won't stop at teaching and learning.

Recruitment, admissions, enrollment operations, student service - every part of the student journey is going to be affected.

Based on the conversations we had in Scottsdale, I think more leaders are beginning to see that.

And that's an exciting conversation to be part of.

Your marketing doesn't end when someone inquires.

That sounds obvious. But look at how many organizations are structured:

Marketing generates the lead.
Admissions gets the lead.
And somewhere in that handoff, "marketing" effectively stops.

The prospective student's experience doesn't.

Every follow-up email is marketing.
Every unanswered question is marketing.
Every event reminder is marketing.
Every admissions conversation is marketing.
Every delay is marketing.
Every interaction either strengthens, or weakens, the promise that originally got that student interested.

Maybe we need to stop thinking about marketing and recruitment as two separate parts of the funnel.

To the prospective student, they're one experience.

Would you agree?

The most important part of your marketing may happen after the inquiry. The experience that follows — speed, relevance, clarity, and personalization — can determine whether that student keeps moving forward. https://tinyurl.com/3y4nw9tk

For institutions thinking about where AI fits into graduate recruitment, this is an important conversation…

The Admissions Funnel Is Becoming An Admissions Conversation AI is turning the admissions funnel into an always-on conversation, freeing staff to focus on the human work that matters most.