Notes from the field

Loss aversion — the Nobel Prize-winning insight that losses hurt twice as much as equivalent gains feel good — is reshaping how families read your financial aid package. Here's why that matters, and what you can do about it.

If earnings become the primary measure of a degree's worth, what happens to the programs built around calling instead of compensation?

This one is for the cabinet. Every enrollment and marketing team has people on staff who know exactly what's broken. The information exists. It just doesn't travel. Summer is the window to change that — before the next cycle starts carrying the same weight the last one did.

Every yield season, someone writes a 'Last Chance to Secure Your Spot' email. But urgency applied to an undecided student doesn't create a decision — it creates pressure.

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.

An outside agency ran its application generation campaigns. The emails ran out. And then nothing. Square One built a reengagement campaign that reached students months into a decision they hadn't yet made, and brought 120+ of them back into the funnel.

Hotels solved the 'almost booked' problem years ago. Here's what enrollment teams can steal from hospitality to move students toward “yes”.

You can say you’re affordable, inclusive and supportive. But if what students see doesn’t match, they won’t believe you. That disconnect is cognitive dissonance—and it’s quietly driving students away. Here’s how enrollment marketers can align messaging, experience, and behavior to build trust and keep students engaged.

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.

When the new vice president of enrollment arrived, she discovered there was no yield campaign in place. None at all. With admitted students already in the pipeline and a narrow window before May 1, the institution needed a full yield strategy built and deployed in weeks.

If your campus visit feels “off,” it’s probably not your tour—it’s your details. From seating layouts to waiting experiences, the smallest moments shape how students decide if they belong. Here’s how to fix them.

The best campus visits don’t happen by accident — they happen by design. In Part 2 of this series, we dive into how retail and hospitality brands use the five senses to shape emotion and memory, and how your admissions office can do the same. From scent and sound to comfort, taste, and visual identity, discover the small changes that transform your visit experience into something students feel long after they leave your campus.

In this first post of a three-part series, I share how the simple act of watching visitors enter our building changed everything about our campus visit design and why the first five minutes matter more than any tour script.

A new marketing leader inherited Slate Deliver that was barely functioning for their communications. Within one recruitment cycle, the University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy in St. Louis had its largest incoming undergraduate and pharmacy classes in 10 years and met enrollment for a brand-new online MPH program.

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.

Higher education has its own language, but for first-generation families, that language can sound like a locked door. From jargon and acronyms to deficit-based labels, colleges often communicate in ways that confuse the very students they hope to include. This piece unpacks how words quietly shape belonging — and how marketers and enrollment leaders can rewrite them to open more doors.

After a year of secret shopping as a student and parent, I uncovered what most colleges get wrong about text messaging. Generic, one-off blasts don’t build trust—thoughtful, timely, personalized texts do. In this episode, we explore what works, what doesn’t, and how to make SMS a real relationship builder.

This year, I gave my cell number to 26 colleges as part of my annual secret shopping experiment. The results? 77% texted me as a student, but none texted me as a parent. In this blog, I share real examples of what colleges are sending, what’s working (and what’s not), and simple rewrites that turn one-way announcements into real conversations.