The Marginal Effects of High School Visits: A Step toward an Empirically Driven Marketing Program. AIR 2002 Forum Paper.

Admissions officers devote substantial resources to high school visits and other recruiting events. Economic theory indicates that the best measure of effectiveness is marginal productivity. Subjects in this study were applicants to a large, Catholic, urban university and all students who participated in recruiting programs in fall 2002. Researchers aggregated the records of 70,946 prospective students to provide data for 10,133 high schools. A regression model was used to estimate the marginal effects of four categories of recruiting activities on applications for admissions while controlling for high school characteristics. Each type of activity had positive effects. The regression model was then used to predict the marginal effects of prospective high school visits and to rank them accordingly. Certain characteristics of the high schools were positively related to applications, such as the number of applications received in the previous year. Marketing activities before senior year also had a positive effect on applications. The analysis suggests changes to the visit program that would yield an increase in applications. (Contains 2 tables and 10 references.) (Author/SLD)