Business Intelligence Takes on New Meaning For a Growing Number of Universities
Schools Across the Country Using New Views on Existing Data To Recruit, Select & Serve Students
February 13, 2007, Conway, NH - Like most enrollment managers and admissions directors, for Mary Grondahl, advancing the College of St. Rose is a top priority. The Albany, NY based College wants to continue their more than 40% per decade growth rate, but faced with a maximum capacity situation they knew they needed a new perspective.
Like many colleges today, the College of St. Rose is turning to business intelligence technology for a new outlook and a solution that 30 other higher education institutions across the country have adopted over the last few months. At schools such as Northwestern University, Iowa State University and the University of Vermont, manual-intensive spreadsheets and difficult to use statistical software solutions are being replaced by Rapid Insight® Analytics.
Rapid Insight (www.rapidinsightinc.com) delivers sophisticated admissions and enrollment solutions designed to significantly enrollment management. By simplifying and automating the data mining process, Rapid Insight® Analytics allows college admissions offices to understand and predict information on their students and prospects. Rapid Insight develops state-of-the-art analytic software that enables higher education institutions to thoroughly explore, visualize, and understand their data. The software automates significant portions of the data mining process, finding relationships in data and presenting them graphically to the user.
"Data is power," said Grondahl, Vice President of Enrollment for The College of St. Rose. "The Rapid Insight solution allows us to make decisions on a dime rather than having to wait for data from other departments, having to put together several different reports, or needing to extract data from often cumbersome systems. We are now able to immediately uncover potentials for expansion and missed opportunities as well as to increase graduation rates and provide better service to our students by knowing more about them."
On the opposite coast, in Santa Barbara, California, Westmont College is using the solution to make the best use of their 1,200 rigid capped student enrollment. The College is using Rapid Insight® Analytics to develop a predictive model for recruitment and enrollment rather than casting a wide net. These models will take into account data such as students' high school GPA, SAT scores, ACT scores, student gender, major, and state of residence. The resulting information will be used to segment inquiries and applicants into different groups so that they can decide where college recruiters should focus their efforts and how their marketing efforts and budget should be spent.
Although Westmont just started using the solution, Joyce Luy, the school's Dean of Admissions, envisions being able to better choose and execute on marketing tactics, such as mailings, advertising and events. "Rather than doing a mailing to all of the prospective students, we can target our mailings more selectively and put the resources that we would have spent towards other, more fruitful, efforts."
According to Mike Laracy, President & CEO of Rapid Insight, better data intelligence is a win/win situation for schools and students. "Schools are now able to select the students that will be the most successful at their institution, and that is what every educator wants, student success."
