Why Do You Keep Losing Your Most Talented Students to Other Schools? Helping a Big Fish Choose Your Small Pond
Nothing haunts the fisherman like the memory of that big fish that got away. This is true with performing and visual arts colleges, especially those that are not blessed by national rankings of being in the top 5 or 10 of what they do (according to whoever parents are listening to at the moment) amongst their peers. The story is a common one. You are not having much trouble filling your class, but due to the competition you are lucky if you only enroll 1 or 2 of your top 10 or 20 most talented admits. You stand by helplessly as you watch your prize admits, the top 1% of your admitted class accept a matching or (worse yet) lesser financial aid offer and choose to study at a school that they perceive to be better than you.
There is little you can do to overcome the reputation of another school considered for decades as the best at what they do. Even if you know it isn’t really true. Without naming names, it is difficult to convince a top student, who has been honored to be admitted into one of the best schools in the country, that your arguably excellent school is just as good (perhaps even better!). If you downplay the national rankings, it seems like sour grapes. If you point out negatives that you know to be true about that other school, it feels disingenuous and sets you in a negative light. And because this phenomenon repeats itself year after year, you can’t even argue that the student’s peers at your school will be comparable to their peers at this stellar school.
I once worked in an art and design college well known for placing their graduates directly into good jobs and was known by many in the design industry as having very well-prepared graduates, who are ready for the world of work the day after graduation. These same design companies would tell us how another school (with a much higher “rank” and reputation) also had very talented students, but their graduates were not even close to being ready for the world of work when they graduated. But these facts did not translate into changed behavior of parents and students when they deciding which college to attend. It still did not matter to parents because they were convinced the other school was the better one. Parents (and students) again and again based their decisions on reputation and magazine rankings. Nothing more. What is a school to do?
Where many schools fail in addressing this challenge is in communicating convincingly the very best attributes of their school and in demonstrating clearly how those attributes are especially amplified for the most talented students. To make the case to their very best students, you need to have a communication flow to applicants that helps a big fish choose your small pond. It is critical then, when you have a very top student that you do not want to lose, that you communicate the following:
THEY ARE LOVED, WILL BE WELL FUNDED, AND WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD YOUR SCHOOL. SCHOLARSHIP OFFERS ARE IMPORTANT TO STUDENTS, BUT OFTEN SCHOOLS DO NOT ARTICULATE THESE OTHER ASPECTS. THE OFFER YOU MAKE SHOULD CLEARLY COMMUNICATE THE FOLLOWING:
The scholarship you offer is truly an honor and an indication of your assessment and impression of them as a performing or visual artist.
The scholarship amount compared to the costs of attendance, what it covers, and if it's guaranteed for the duration of the degree program.
The award is among your very best awards and is among the best offers you make each year.
THEY ARE SPECIAL AND NORMAL.
The quality and talent of this student, while highly desirable, is normal at your school. Like a first date, you don’t want to scare the student away by appearing desperate, and you also do not want to appear aloof like you don’t care. There is an art to communicating that you both want a student and will not be devastated if they do not enroll. It is called, “wanting the best for them”. You simply need to express and communicate that while you hope they will attend your school, you want the best for them on their path to becoming the best visual or performing artist they can be.
THEY WILL HAVE EXCEPTIONAL ACCESS TO YOUR BEST FACULTY.
Quite often, top students get a lot of individual attention that they never expect. But it is a fact that the very best students get access to faculty that they would never get at the highly ranked school. In smaller, often more scrappy schools, faculty take pride in their best students. These faculty are also often working at these schools because they value teaching as well as honing their craft, and therefore have a higher level of commitment to teaching than may be found at other schools. If a strong faculty is in place at your school, you need to communicate that. In my experience, faculty can provide immeasurable time and attention to their best students, if not all of their students, in ways that often do not happen at some of the very best colleges.
THEY WILL HAVE EXPOSURE TO OPPORTUNITIES THAT MAY NEVER BE POSSIBLE ELSEWHERE.
For example, I attended a small music school in the midwest, which was part of a liberal arts college. The top trumpet student in that college each year was the always second trumpet player in the faculty brass quintet. The top trombone player each year (while I was there) was the first called sub for the nearby professional orchestra. The opportunities these students had while studying there, far outpaced the competitor schools where they would be among many other students, vying for infrequent and lesser opportunities.
ALUMNI SUCCESS STORIES.
In the end, especially in the arts, school reputation means very little once a graduate enters the world of the professional artist. People who commission, hire, and support artists care most about the quality of work. It is important to provide examples, not only of famous graduates if you have them, but also of everyday stories of successful lesser-known graduates, especially of those younger alums finding success soon after graduation. This information is directly relevant to why a student is going to college in the first place.
ACCESS TO EDUCATIONAL FUNDING.
Some schools actively sweeten the pot for some of their most talented students by offering grant funding for special projects. Such funds and opportunities often do not exist at other schools, or if they do, competition is fierce for limited funding. But letting your big fish know these funds exist and are accessible to them (or better yet, simply build the funding into their offer of admission!), can also help these students have an understanding of what they’ll be missing if they make the biggest mistake of their life and choose to attend that other school.
Clearly, this list is not exhaustive, and every school has its unique set of resources and reasons why a very talented student should choose it over that other school with that amazing reputation. However, many schools fail to communicate these opportunities and resources in an effective way to their newly admitted students. A communication strategy and plan needs to be set in motion to ensure that no single student ever walks away from you without knowing all of these amazing facts about your institution.
And while not the point of this article, it is good to note that when any of the items in the list apply to all students, and not just the top 1%, you should be singing it from the rooftops to all applicants and admitted students and pointing out that these benefits exist for everyone.
Such efforts are not a guarantee that you will enroll your top 1% of admits, but by communicating all of the above, you can know that you left no stone unturned, you went down swinging, left it all on the field, and exhausted every possible cliché in your attempt to bring that big fish into your little pond.
Robert Borden is the President of BFE Blueprint and co-creator of the Blueprint Strategic Enrollment Planning Tool. Over the past two decades, he has worked with niche colleges, especially in the performing and visual arts, and has effectively served to assist each school find and enroll talented students and attain the school's student enrollment goals.
