Enrollment Management Advisory Committee
Spring 2003
More details on Recruit, Retain 2.3.7.2

The Royall Fast App Program

On January 9, Saint Mary’s College launched a new initiative, the Scholars’ Advantage Application Program, in cooperation with Royall & Company of Richmond, Virginia. After discussion with the Administrative Council, it was decided that we would engage Royall to implement this new fast application strategy with the understanding that we would pay for the postage to mail to 10,000 of our prospective students. If the mailing is deemed successful, we will pay the balance of $47,000, the balance of total program cost. We will make this determination after fall registration numbers are in, when we know how many students enrolled as a result of the Scholars’ Advantage application for admission.
When Bill Royall, president of Royall & Company, offered us this opportunity, he assured us that we could expect a 4% conversion of prospects to applicants, or 400 applications from this program. He further stated that we should apply our traditional acceptance rate of 82% and expect a lower than average yield, or approximately 30%. With these guidelines, our projection would be 328 accepted students and 98 enrolled students. However, since we decided to implement the program approximately two months later than his other clients using this program, the Administrative Council agreed that we would consider the program successful if we enrolled 60 Scholars’ Advantage Program students.

Vmag for Accepted Students

For the second year, the Admission Office will send all admitted students an opportunity to view six issues of a video magazine known as the Saint Mary’s College Vmag. Nick Farmer and his team will be helping to update last year’s issues and we will begin delivering the Vmag CD-ROMS to admitted students by mid February. Students will need a PC with Windows operating system and Internet access. Before May 1, the National Candidate’s Reply Date, we will automatically deliver the five successive VMag issues to their desktops. A Saint Mary’s icon will appear on their screen to notify them when each issue arrives.

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