Kentucky’s proactive admissions law is officially on the books — and it raises questions that go well beyond policy. Who’s already in your pipeline? How do you sort a new population you’ve never recruited before? And is your CRM actually ready? Here’s where to start.

This regional public university had no real admitted student campaign. For a campus where many students would be first-generation college-goers, that silence carried real risk. The campaign Square One built drove 21.7% deposit growth year over year.

We spend a lot of time thinking about what students are feeling during yield season. We almost never talk about what's happening to their parents — the financial fear, the grief, the midnight Google searches. That's a significant gap. And it's costing institutions deposits.

After nearly two decades in higher education, I realized the biggest barrier for first-generation students is not access, it is understanding. The words we use, the tone we take, and the way we ask shape whether a student feels college is for them. The TRUST Messaging Framework — Teach, Respond, Understand, Simplify, Talk, was born from thousands of real emails and conversations. It is a tool any campus communicator can use to build clarity, compassion, and connection across

Financial aid should open doors, not close them. But for many first-generation families, aid letters, portals, and payment plans read like a foreign language. This post unpacks why the money conversation is so confusing, how that confusion erodes trust, and what colleges can do to make financial aid communication clear, consistent, and genuinely first-gen friendly.