Understanding the enrollment motives of college transfer students

When discussing recruiting students to college, it’s inevitable that we think of first-time freshmen coming to campus. Most campus recruitment initiatives reflect that assumption, from the organization of a school’s home page to the content of its viewbooks to the travel strategies of its admissions staff.

In the process, we often overlook recruiting a significant group of students who are also interested in enrolling at new college campuses: transfer students. The most recent study by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) notes that one out of every three students who enroll at two-year or four-year institutions transfer to another college or university. That means there are millions of potential students looking for new campuses where they can continue their college educations.

Of course, transfer students are not first-time freshmen. Having already enrolled at a campus and perhaps even completed a degree, they come with a very different set of needs and expectations than first-time students. You have to address their motivations if you want to build a robust transfer recruitment plan.

In general, transfer students have three major motivations when deciding where to enroll:

1. Transferability of courses

This is by far the most dominant motive among transfer students. The last thing they want is to lose credit for courses they have already taken; nothing will quash their interest faster. They want to know how much credit they will receive for the general education requirements for degree completion as well as toward the requirements in their major field.

2. Academic advising

Along with wanting to know how much of their previous coursework will transfer to a new campus, transfer students need direction on plotting a course to degree completion. Before making a commitment to enroll, they want to have access to advisors who understand the unique issues of the transfer student and can provide direction to them.

3. Career counseling and placement

Transfer students tend to have an idea of their career direction by the time they look for a new campus. The prospect of graduation looms that much closer than it does for first-time freshmen, so transfer students will want assurance that a degree from their new campus will lead toward their next life goals, whether it be a career or graduate/professional study.

Transfer students certainly have other motivations and concerns—cost and financial aid, location, school reputation, and so on—but it’s important to address these three major motivations as you market to and recruit transfers.

So how can you satisfy these motivations and strengthen your recruitment of transfer students? Here are a few strategies that are working for campuses:

• Create a specific recruitment plan for transfer students
  It sounds simple, but it is surprising how many schools have either poorly defined recruitment plans for transfer students or no plan at all. It’s important that your plan considers the condensed admissions cycle of transfer students, articulates your goals for transfer enrollment, and defines initiatives that directly address transfer recruitment.
• Build and track a separate transfer student inquiry pool
  Transfer students tend to make their enrollment decisions more quickly than traditional students. Many also do not inquire until they apply. That means you have to move more quickly with them, and keeping those inquiries separate will help you do that.
• Communicate directly with transfer students
  Transfer students not only have different motivations than first-time freshman. They also tend to be older, more directed in their education and career plans, and more likely to have families and jobs outside of school. Create transfer-specific content on your Web site and make that content easy to find on your home page. Do the same with your communications flow, and tailor your messages to compensate for the shorter decision cycle of transfers.
• Have staff who can cater to the needs of transfer students
  When considering a school, transfer students need two services from staff: course evaluations and academic advising. Offering on-the-spot transcript evaluation to address the dominant motivation of transfers is also an excellent strategy for not only accommodating transfer students, but determining if a transfer student would be a good fit at your institution.
• Create new articulation agreements and strengthen existing ones
  Recruiting transfer students is much easier when you have institutions who act as partners in the process to feed transfer students to your campus. True articulation is best done through the ongoing communication and relationship between the administration of your institution and your feeder community colleges.

If you have any questions about transfer student recruitment, I would be happy to speak with you. Please leave a comment below or e-mail me, and good luck with your efforts in the coming year.