How do you know what you’re doing is doing what you want it to do?

That was the title of a conference session I delivered back in 2012 at a joint SACAC and PACAC conference in Washington DC. We had just completed a series of assessments in our office and struggled to get beyond headcounts and satisfaction surveys. Admissions is a numbers business so we like to count. How many students attended your visit at high school X today? How many families came for a tour? We also like our surveys. Did you like the program today? Was the food good?

Of course we do this because it’s easy. Lots of people show up and they seemed happy. It was a successful event/visit. Yea!! If all we’re trying to do is get more people to attend our event than last year, maybe that’s enough. I doubt that’s the goal. We run events to increase applications. We host admitted student days to increase yield. We conduct call campaigns to drive certain actions.

Staff turnover, work schedules or simple complacency leads to do what we did last year. I believe we need to spend more time thinking through why we’re doing what we do. Until then, we’ll struggle with answering the question I posed at that conference.