A lot of families across America are dealing with COVID-19 and the disruption of their college plans.
One major disruption focuses on the canceled SAT and ACT testing dates. What’s a student to do when they can’t take a test that will undoubtedly impact the admissions and financial aid decisions of the college?
I am going to dive into some technicalities, but if you can stick with me, I think there is a silver lining here.
Big Data. Predictive Analytics. Artificial Intelligence. Affinity Index. LTE. This sounds like the fragments of something published in a white paper or scientific journal. The reality is that these highly complex and abstract concepts have increasingly dominated the decisions behind admissions and financial aid at most of the major colleges and universities in the country.
Enrollment management looks at higher education from the lens of a competitive marketplace with various institutions competing for a limited supply of favorable applicants and an even more limited supply of the family’s finances.
The simplest way to say this is that your student’s chances of admission and landing scholarships has been reduced to a series of complex formulas and algorithms. Your test scores, GPA, and essay keyword analytics are just the beginning.
We’ve learned that social media has introduced myriad of additional data points that feed the enrollment management machine.
We embrace these trends and have developed best practices to leverage social media in tandem with traditional student metrics to increase the success of college admission and obtain a greater share of grants and scholarships.
The intention of our social media strategy was never to directly manipulate the enrollment management machine.
The intention is to recognize that a student should not be reduced to a test score or a 600-word essay. With social media, you are not faced with such boundaries.
For example, an Instagram account can catalog a student’s emerging passions and interests over an extended duration of time. A LinkedIn page can give colleges a hint of the professional a student hopes to become in the future.
A properly structured Twitter account can give a college real-time insight into a student’s belief system and what causes they champion.
We believe that feeding the enrollment management machine is not the focus, but merely a positive byproduct of a carefully crafted social media footprint. There is a reason why almost every college and university has an active social media presence in each of these platforms.
Now if you have made it this far, let’s talk about that silver lining.
COVID-19 has created an unprecedented opportunity. Test scores and GPAs are becoming less reliable data points due to the consequences of shelter-in-place orders and canceled classes.
An increasing number of colleges are adopting test score optional policies as a result.
They are also scrambling to make sense of the new reality of college admissions: The enrollment management machine is breaking. When you strip away the data, what is left is the content of your student’s character. We are left with what intrinsically drives them. We are left with the pieces of your student that should matter most with the college admissions and financial aid decision.
So, while we are all sheltered in place, let’s see if we can make some lemonade out of these lemons that life has dealt all of us, and let’s build your student’s social media footprint.
Danny Umali is a community contributor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the principal of Game Theory College Planners. He has helped more than a thousand high school students and their families navigate the complexities of applying to college. He lives in Sandy Springs with his wife Karen and his three terriers. He can be reached at danny@gametheorycollege.com
