How To Prepare Forecasts Of Enrollments Of First Year Students

HOW TO PREPARE FORECASTS OF ENROLLMENTS OF FIRST YEAR STUDENTS By William M. Bassin, Ronald G. Sellner, and Doyle Bickers Shows step by step how to forecast the enrollments of well prepared first year students ... uses the actual data of one university to demonstrate the procedure ... such forecasts can help the admission office to establish realistic goals, as well as to craft its academic programs. The advent of the enrollment management movement has raised the expectation level of campus leaders for admissions officers. Currently, they are not only required to recruit an adequate number of students but also to make highly accurate forecasts, forecasts that fall within precise bands. In addition to enrolling the desired aggregate number of students in a class, goals are identified for subsets of the population such as minority students, students with certain academic majors, and students with specific academic profiles. Determining which variables impact on populations and how these factors interact involves both art and science. This paper describes a model for making forecasts for one group of students, freshmen with a locally defined set of academic criteria which is believed ...