Grants and Schoolarships
Why it's not important to start with grants and schoolarships in the process to recruit students?
You don't want to first talk up grants & scholarships because you don't want to sale financial aid. You want to build the value of education & have your student see it to be an investment in themselves & inform them of all the options available for those that qualify, including loans & out of pocket payments. If you highlight grants & scholarships more so, you have your prospect focused on those means only in paying for school & if they don't qualify, they may be closed minded to other options.
You bring up a good point, May. In admissions we don't know if and how much financial aid a student will get and so at that stage of the process we need to remain positive yet not make any promises. Leaving the financial aid conversations to the experts is a best practice.
Dr. Jean Norris
This is my mindset. I always make the student feel as if what they bring to the table with can be worked with and can get them to where they want to be. If a student brings me a bad record I try and make them feel as if that is fine we can work with it.
I agree with this one hundred percent. I like to make the prospective student feel happy and wanted during the admissions process. What is the student does not qualify for financial aid and has to have the burden of paying the tuition themselves? What if the student does not qualify for grants or scholarships due to a bad grade récord. I do not want potential students to be put down and think that they messed up or have to go through a hardship.
That's a great question Teresa. During the admissions process there are many things we need to communicate to the prospective student including information about financial aid. We like the approach of taking the time to ask good questions to understand the prospective student's needs and wants, and once we gather this information we can customize our approach so that we talk about the things that are the most important to them, which may be grants and scholarships. What are some good questions to learn about what's important to your students?
Dr. Jean Norris
