As Decision Day Looms, Colleges Try to Boost Minority Enrollment

Now that college acceptance letters have been sent, the pressure is on students to choose what schools to attend by May 1^st, National Decision Day. But institutions are under pressure, too. The effects of the pandemic on college enrollments are still lingering, with a total enrollment decline of 1.2 million students since the fall of 2019, and notable decreases in students with several under-represented backgrounds. This year, schools have been doing everything that they can to entice students—particularly minoritized ones—to commit for next fall.

The process of getting students enrolled and on-campus starts long before they’ve even applied. Queens University of Charlotte has tweaked its outreach strategy this year beginning with its very first interaction with a student.

“We adjusted our communication to be focused on where the student is in the journey, instead of centering Queens,” said Adrienne Oddi, the vice president of strategic enrollment and communications. “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, Queens is awesome,’ we start with ‘Hey, we think you’re awesome.’”

This encouraging attitude can be especially important for students from under-represented backgrounds, who may feel uncertain about whether college is for them.

“It’s helping people see themselves in a space that may be unfamiliar to them, that’s potentially different from what others around them are experiencing,” said Oddi.

John Latting, associate vice provost and dean of admission at Emory UniversityMaking sure that minoritized students know that they can fit in at college was an important motivator of Emory University’s social media strategy for this year, according to John Latting, associate vice provost and dean of admission at the Atlanta-based school. Emory hired a diverse group of student-employees to work on social media this year, with the aim of making the college seem more approachable to students from different backgrounds. At times, the content is clearly pitched towards this goal, like in a video of a Black student from New York speaking about his experiences in the South. But it also comes through more casually, with clips showing diverse students simply living their lives on campus.