News > October 18, 2007

By Elliot Engstrom | Asst. news editor

Members of the Art and Science Group L.L.C. held a forum Oct. 17 to discuss the findings of their study of the university with students. Art and Science Group L.L.C. is a group that does consulting for higher education institutions, especially in the vein of strategic planning. The study focused on admissions at the university, both the positive and negative aspects.

It also looked at whether or not growth and an increase in the number of students enrolled at the university is a possibility.

This information was found by interviewing hundreds of students who fall into the university’s applicant pool.

The presentation at the forum was given primarily by Senior Partner Rick Hesel and Consultant Craig Goebel, both from Art and Science Group, L.L.C.

The primary results pertained to how the university can attract a greater number of high school students going through the college search process, a first step in growth.

However, the group has not yet recommended any conclusions for the university based on the results that have been gathered.

“We’re not yet at the stage where we’re reporting what we recommend out of this,” Hesel said.

“It will be another 30 days or so before we are ready to talk about what needs to be done.”

The results focused primarily on areas where admissions at the university are lacking.

In addition, the study looked at other positive areas in which the admissions processes are working well in recruiting new students and interest in the university.

“We are mainly concerned with how institutions engage outside constituencies that are important to their future,” Hesel said of the purpose of the completed study.

“In this case we’re working with Wake on a project looking at the enrollment growth question. We are not making an assumption that enrollment should grow.”

A major focus of the study was about what the university needs, whether growth in the overall size of the university should occur or not and what these types of needs will cost.

“The other thread of our work is looking at prospective student recruitment and enrollment,” Hesel said.

“What can we do to increase the number of students who apply and want to come to Wake Forest?”

At the forum, attended by only a handful of students, Hesel and Goebel discussed the special aspects of the university that need to be preserved, as well as areas of the university that could use some improvement.

For example, they tested prospective students on how high they would rank the university in several different areas, including price, financial aid, residential life, study abroad, sports and many other factors.

“We asked students, given the descriptions of the schools based on these factors, which they would apply to,” Geobel said.

“We now have a database that we can run models on to predict not just how appealing something might be, but actually how it could affect applications or enrollment, so it’s very strong in predictive power.”

In a similar way, it was determined what factors were the most important to prospective students.

Then the university specifically was ranked on how it currently exemplifies these factors that were determined by the prospective students asked.

The research method used is blind, which means that when students were asked a question about Wake Forest, they were also asked the same question about several other universities, so that there would not be evidence of a sponsor bias as a result of the wording of the questions.

One of the most interesting findings was that the university’s top competitors for applicants are not small liberal arts colleges as many believe, but instead top-ranked doctoral level institutions like UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke and the University of Virginia. UNC in particular is the university’s primary competitor for in-state students. Of all in-state students who were accepted at the university but did not enroll, over half chose to enroll at UNC.

The research also found that a prospective student’s campus visit is the single most important influence in his or her decision of where to attend college.

Also, an area that has significant room for improvement is admissions communications and the university Web site.

“The Web site is dreadful,” Hesel said.

“But both the Web site and communications are quick fixes.”

One particularly surprising positive finding was that the “Work Forest” mentality is a positive for prospective students.

Also, the research showed that cost is not a major issue when students are considering where they want to apply to college.

The consulting group should be prepared to make its recommendations about the growth of the university within 30 days.