At Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, a long-term partnership in enrollment and financial aid has produced steady enrollment, a decreased discount rate, and increased revenue—while maintaining one of the most diverse campuses in the Midwest. The campus also made a strategic pivot during COVID-19 to develop online events to co-exist with their face-to-face ones.
+11%
increase in admitted student rate
+29%
confirmed student rate
+500%
outreach events (online and in-person)
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RNL’s Ashley Spain talks with Vice President of Enrollment Services Dave Wegener about how his campus increases access for students at Mount Mary University while also making sure the institution achieves its goals for enrollment and revenue.
About Mount Mary University
Mount Mary University is a small private, Roman Catholic all-girls undergraduate school with nine co-educational graduate programs located on 80 acres north of Milwaukee. U.S. News and World Report ranked Mount Mary as one of the two most diverse campuses in the Midwest.
50%
women of color
70%
Pell-eligible and first-generation
A decade-long partnership
Dave Wegener was already familiar with RNL when he started his new position as vice president of enrollment services at Mount Mary 11 years ago—and he has partnered with RNL for about 16 years total during his career. When considering if he’d recommend or “re-up” with RNL, Dave says “unequivocally.”
“I can always tell when a vendor is selling me a cookie cutter solution and something that everybody else gets and so there’s no competitive advantage to it. I’ve loved the creativity that’s always been part of the RNL partnership.”
Developing a strategic financial aid plan
Mount Mary has used RNL’s top-of-funnel predictive modeling solutions along with our financial aid solutions and net price calculator. But the university specifically needed help developing a strategic financial aid plan. The financial team was very bright and was known to have an outstanding customer service-orientation, but they needed three things:
- A robust financial aid model.
- The right analytical tools.
- A partner who would work in partnership with the financial team to leverage the model.
As Dave described it: “I wanted a partner that was familiar with financial aid modeling—which RNL was—but also one that was committed to hearing what we needed and bringing to the table some creative ideas.”
Data = clarity = ability to act
Mount Mary used to be very late in the financial aid cycle. Now they’ve moved up to being one of the first schools that get packages out each October. Dave continues to be impressed. “The analytic tool enhancements and developments—pretty much every year there’s been a new bell and whistle that helps us see data more clearly. The sooner you can see clear data, the greater the opportunity is to act upon it.” Now as soon as Mount Mary sees something affecting the trajectory of their goal, they can tweak the process to stay on track.
Another benefit, one Dave candidly described as “a little selfish” is the way that the interaction with RNL consultants has “raised the literacy” of the president and the president’s council for financial aid. “I love the fact that consultants assigned to us have asked have always asked if it would it be beneficial for certain of our staff members to be included in on some of our regular meetings. I found that to be helpful to raise literacies with folks who don’t always have all the information I wish they would have.”
Communicating in a noisy world with diverse needs
The information age is noisy,” says Dave. “Everybody is speaking very loudly and very regularly.” As a result, students can become numb to all the information coming their way. To get through the noise, Dave knows that messages must be relevant, timely, and creative. “We’re competing with a lot of creative ways to get information across.”
With this and the distinctive composition of Mount Mary’s student body, RNL consultant John Mueller suggested adding parents into the communication flows. Mount Mary now has bilingual formats for the large percent of prospective Latina students and their families.
Key communication strategies
Parent communication flows
Bilingual communications
Over the long haul: Creatively keeping it nimble
One of Mount Mary’s recent triumphs was their responsive addition of modalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic pulled out the high-end technology skills of Mount Mary’s team and as Dave described it: “When everything got shut down in a face-to-face realm, we were ahead of the curve—at least here in the Wisconsin—of doing online programming. We have gone from having one to two online events, pre-pandemic, to one almost every day of the week.” Now, Mount Mary is making the most of both pre- and mid-pandemic approaches and by using a combination of face-to-face and online formats, the university has increased its outreach events by 500 percent.
A bright future of hitting their targets
Enrollment has stayed steady while their discount rate has decreased and revenue has increased. The future looks even better. Compared to this time point last year, the admitted student rate is up 11 percent and the confirmed student rate is up 29 percent.
“I think that the bottom line, the thing that I’ve got to answer to as a vice president of enrollment to our president is this: ‘Are we meeting enrollment goals?’ Then to our vice President of finance: ‘Are we meeting our net revenue goals?’ I can continue to say, ‘Yes, we’re hitting those targets.’”
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