Predict Student Matriculation (Yield)

Education Operations Increase Revenue Executive Summary Other

Predicting the likelihood that an accepted student will enroll (yield rate).

Overview

Business Problem

When Universities and Colleges are choosing applicants to accept, one of the key performance indicators most institutions care about most is yield rate, or the ratio of students who matriculate to the total number of students who were accepted. For many universities – even some of the most prestigious – yield rates tend to be under 50 percent. If they accept too many students, then they might have too many spots. If they accept too few, then they may not be able to get the students they really want. To mitigate this problem, they need to accurately forecast the matriculation probability distribution across the current cohort of accepted students and make trade-offs on their level of interest in a student against the student’s probability of matriculating. Because of this, universities with a low yield rate need to accept more students to fill the class, resulting in a higher acceptance rate. Acceptance rate is a popular benchmark for prestige, so most schools aim to increase their yield rate. While a higher yield rate is better, it is also important to accurately forecast yield, as faulty predictions can result in missed revenue objectives on one end, or enrollment surplus on the other, both of which can be detrimental to a school’s reputation and balance sheet.

Intelligent Solution

AI empowers your organization to predict the likelihood an accepted student will enroll. Your university administrators and admissions officers will be able to put the comprehensive data they have on their prospective students to use by predicting the likelihood of enrollment of each accepted student. This enables admissions to not simply send acceptance letters to the best students, but to identify the best students with the best possibility to enroll. This helps the school adequately forecast tuition revenues for the upcoming year, understand staffing needs, and plan various housing situations. By predicting your yield rate, you will subsequently have insight on your expected acceptance rates.