Enrollment managers always seem to have a myriad of reports to review. No doubt there are some you pay closer attention to than others. You may also have reports available that aren't utilized for whatever reason. What should you be reviewing and what will it tell you?

What do you measure against? Goals or previous year or national averages or ????? The answer is, "Yes". Depending on the time of year and the particular measure you may want to do all of the above. In an ideal world, your goals are reasonable 'stretches' from historical reality. Consideration should be given to any unusual factors that may come in to play such as adding a new major, opening new locations or new competitors moving in to your area. Historical comparisons are good. Goals based on sound logic are better. Too much comparison with yourself, however, can lead to inappropriate conclusions. Comparing your performance with outside benchmarks (either in terms of like institutions or national averages) can be a great way to check your effectiveness.

Marketing Marketing reports should be designed to assist you in determine the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. Generally speaking, you will want to measure the actual number of leads generated...by source. This should be compared to your lead goal. You will also want to measure the cost effectiveness of your efforts by calculating per source a cost per lead, cost per application and cost per start value. If you're able to generate integrated reporting, it's also interesting to review at least annually, the graduate rate per lead source. Tracking lead source effectiveness through the entire enrollment funnel may give you some very different perspectives concerning the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. Volume leads doesn't always equate to proportional volume applications, starts and graduates. The bottom line in measuring marketing efforts is to continually fine-tune your strategies to give you the quality (in terms of individuals who are likely to start classes and graduate) as well as quantity. If you get really good at this part, the enrollment funnel becomes more of a cylinder and you get more efficient in terms of targeting your marketing -- generating more, quality leads at equal or less expense.

Admissions Admissions is typically the department that is measured most heavily. Many colleges will want to measure interim processes, but the major ones are always the number of leads, applications and starts per representative. Depending on your market and processes, tracking the number of appointments schedule and appointments held is also helpful. The point of admissions tracking is to ensure all the leads are being efficiently followed up and to identify potential issues. Those may include insights to better target your marketing, the need for additional staff development or 'process clogs' in areas outside of your Admissions department.

'Measure the number of outbound transcript requests'.

Advising/Retention If you have centralized advising, you will want to measure the number of students assigned to each advisor and the number who persist from one term to the next. Separately, you should also be calculating and monitoring the potential pool (however you decide to define this) and the number of re-entering students (stop outs) per advisor. When you are comparing, be sure to take in to account any significant differences based on the way students are assigned. For instance, if your college makes advising assignments with all the 'high risk' students to one or two advisors, you would expect their persistence and graduation rates to be lower.

Financial Aid Financial Aid activity isn't always tracked but the numbers here can tell you a great deal when you are reviewing process and staffing issues. Key measures should include the number of applications received (ideally, you will separate these in to your three main categories of 'new', 'returning' and 'stop out' markets to get a true picture of activity). Out of the files received, how many have complete files and then how many are awarded? You will see some cyclical information as the financial aid year progresses. For instance, this time of year traditional colleges have large amounts of FASFA files coming in but haven't yet had a chance to really get through the awarding process. That gap should steadily decrease. If it doesn't you have a problem somewhere (process or staffing or training) that needs to be addressed.

Registrar Many colleges don't consider the impact the Registrar's Office can have on enrollment. If you are dealing with a non-traditional market where many of your students have prior college credit, this can be an issue. Consequently, you may want to track the number of incoming transcripts received and the number evaluated. Just as with Financial Aid, you shouldn't see huge gaps between those numbers for very long. If you do, it's time to start asking some questions.

Interestingly, another critical measure for the Registrar can be the number of requests for outbound transcripts...and to which institutions. This can be an early indicator of retention issues and also help to identify competitor information. If your Registrar staff isn't trained to address student retention issues, training should be considered. It's easy to just hand them a form and then process the request. It is much more crucial that they be able to ask the right probing questions and assist with retention efforts.

Career Services Most colleges track and publish an annual employment assistance report. Some are quite comprehensive and others are, well "interesting". In addition to generating reports associated with any accreditation standards, you also want to get information on your graduates to assist with recruiting and retention efforts. The number of graduates, graduates employed, employed within their major and starting salaries...all by major...are important key measures. You may also find it interesting to track the number you actually assisted in securing employment.

General Enrollment Measures You probably all have some type of consolidated enrollment report that is generated prior to the start of every session. This is great if you can get the key information on all on side of one piece of paper. It should summarize the key points--students and credit hours by student group (new, returning and re-entering).

Other things you should review at least annually Persistence, retention and graduation rates, student loan default rates, transfer out rates (these are students who start with you and leave for another institution). These should be compared to like-institutions so that you have a basis for objective evaluation. Most of this data is public information and reported through IPEDs so it's not difficult to pull up comparable institutions for comparison.

Yes, this is still a rather lengthy list of enrollment management reports! Enrollment management, however, is a complex system that requires constant monitoring. Evaluating key effectiveness measures can save you significant time in the long run by identifying issues early and helping to refine your overall enrollment efforts.