You Know the Funnel, Now Meet the Arrow

Washington—Everyone in admissions talks about the funnel: the model in which a big pool of prospective students narrows to a smaller group of  applicants, to an even smaller group of admitted students, to the final, smallest group of enrolled ones.

Admissions officials and consultants strategize about how to manage that funnel. But it might be the wrong model. At least, that’s what Jon McGee, vice president for planning and public affairs at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, suggested at a session here Thursday at the College Board Forum.

Mr. McGee has come up with an alternative model, one that’s focused less on how an admissions office moves students through the process and more on how students make decisions about where to enroll.

His model is an arrow. Prospective students move from the end of the arrow to the head in three stages. At first, in the “discovery” stage, they are learning facts. Next, during “consideration,” they ponder the benefits of attending a particular college. Finally, at the point of “selection,” they think about fit.

At each stage, students are moved by emotional, experiential, and economic considerations. Colleges tend to overestimate the importance of the experiential part, which is most completely under their control, and undervalue the importance of students’ emotional responses and economic concerns, Mr. McGee said.

The model is meant to be a working one. All of the questions it raises—what matters most to students, how they understand a college, when and why they pick the place they’ll enroll—can be answered with data, Mr. McGee said. In fact, his office has already started collecting information he thinks can help explore those questions.