This document discusses using geodemographic data to help colleges better understand and target prospective students. It introduces the College Board's Descriptor Plus tool, which segments students into clusters based on attributes of their neighborhoods and high schools. These clusters provide insights into students' likely behaviors, like college aspirations. The document suggests colleges can use this data to refine outreach, admissions decisions, and predictive modeling to better achieve enrollment goals. It also outlines services like historical tagging and analysis that Descriptor Plus provides to help schools utilize geodemographic data.

1. Birds of a Feather:
Using Geodemography
in Student Search
May 3, 2012
IACAC
Marc Geslani
Educational Manager

2. Opening Discussion
• Introductions
• What are your enrollment goals, challenges?
• How well does your communication plan help you
achieve your enrollment goals?
• What do you know about students when you get
their information at a college night or when you
buy their name from Student Search?

3. Lurching at Personalization
• Current consumer marketing efforts are focused
on hyper-targeting of individuals
• Some type of learned information or tracked
behavior triggers an event
• Colleges generally don’t have the type and
• frequency of transactional data
• the analytical capabilities
• or communication budget/flexibility
to achieve commercial levels of hyper-targeting

4. What If?
• What would you want to know about students…
• …when they are prospects/suspects?
• …when they are juniors, sophomores or
younger?
• How would you communicate/travel/recruit
differently if you knew these things about
students?

5. College Board Enrollment Planning Tools
• Descriptor Plus
• Geodemographic Segmentation Service
• Clusters contain Descriptions of Students and
Behaviors
• Individual Students are Tagged-
• Can use to segment messages and actions
• Enrollment Planning Service
• Comprehensive Database
• Reports on your markets, your position in those
markets, and your competition

6. Geodemography: Birds of a Feather Flock Together
In Geodemography,
neighborhoods can be
defined by a ZIP+4 Code or
a Census Tract Code.

7. Geodemography: People Emulate Their Neighbors
Geodemography helps College expectations are
companies analyze formed in-part by where
communities. the neighbors are
sending their kids.
Thus, different stores
appear in different College-going patterns in
neighborhoods. different communities
-OR- can be analyzed and
categorized using
A chain store stocks Geodemography.
different items in different
stores.

8. Definition of Geodemography
• Geodemography is the art and science of profiling
people based on where they live
• Commercial services most often profile consumer
behavior
• Descriptor PLUS profiles students college choice
behavior based upon where they live AND where
they go to school.
• Factor Analysis and Profiling led by people with
extensive experience in Enrollment Management.

9. YOU are the target of Geodemography
• Claritas PRIZM introduced in 1979 the first
commercially successful geodemographic service
in the United States (incidentally, around the time
College Board introduced Student Search and
Enrollment Planning Service)
• Acxiom PersonicX is another major player in the
consumer segmentation space.
• Let’s take a look at how these companies look at
us!

10. Is There A Link To What We Do?
• Does consumer-based, household
geodemographic segmentation services tell us
anything about college choice behavior of
traditional students?
• What critical data is missing from these services?

11. Educationally-Relevant Geodemography
Individual student test
Data from College Extrapolated data from the
performance results and Questions asked on
Board high school and U.S. Census and
individual student test score assessment questionnaires
college files American Community Survey
sending patterns
Attributes
33 Educational 29 High School
Neighborhood Clusters (HS)
Clusters (EN)

12. Key Cluster Attributes…
Educational Neighborhood Clusters High School Clusters
• Mean SAT Critical Reading Score • Mean SAT Critical Reading Score
• Mean SAT Math Score • Mean SAT Math Score
• Mean SAT Writing Score • Mean SAT Writing Score
• % of Students 1st Generation • Avg Number of Advanced Courses Taken
• % of Students Likely to Apply Out-of-state • Avg Number of AP Exams per Student
• % of Population college-aged • Avg Admit Rate at Targeted Colleges
• Avg Cost of Targeted Colleges • Avg Cost of Targeted Colleges
• % of Population non-White • % of Students non-White
• Median family income • % of Students 1st Generation
• % Speaking English only • % of Families below Poverty Level
• % of Adults in Professional Jobs • % of Students Likely to Apply Out-of-state
• % Interested in Financial Aid • % Interested in Financial Aid

13. How it works…
Prospects • Descriptor PLUS helps
you to know more
Applicants about your prospects
so that you can
Admits maneuver them
through “the funnel”.
Enrolls

14. How it works…
Prospects • But you need to start
here…
Applicants
A historical tagging of
students that have moved
Admits past the prospect stage is
absolutely necessary!
Enrolls

15. Historical Report
To begin the process of considering or using
Descriptor Plus, we conduct an historical tagging
and analysis.
Let’s take a look at a sample report.
(Sample report only shown at presentation.)

18. Geodemography and Predictive Modeling
• Predictive modeling is the use of past data to predict
future results.
• Geodemographic Segmentation and Predictive Modeling
aren’t the same things.
• They are not in contention with one another in regards to
their effectiveness for student recruitment.
• Schools consistently find that Descriptor PLUS tags are
amongst the most predictive factors in their models.

19. What Is and Isn’t Geodemography
• Geodemographic segmentation is based on a
rigorous statistical analysis of multiple variables.
• But eventually, they are artfully crafted to group
people who behave similarly in a particular
context for a specific purpose.
• Categorizing behavior based on individual
variables (zip code, income) may be significant
factors in a predictive model, but that shouldn’t be
equated to using Descriptor Plus or
Geodemography.

20. What is Delivered with Descriptor PLUS?
• A service that enhances student records with descriptive data
• The data describes prospective students’ characteristics – milieu,
performance, needs, and likely behavior
• Extremely useful when you know very little about a student –
maybe only an address or high school
• Descriptor Plus features
• Comprehensive cluster description guide
• Data Analysis in the form of Historical Reports
• Enhanced Student Search Service ordering capabilities
• Unlimited student record tagging

21. How Can We Use This Data?
• Load Tags Into Database
• Conduct analyses by school, ethnicity, gender, etc.
• Refine Outreach & Messaging
• Who are we successful in recruiting and how does our
outreach & messaging match to those clusters?
• Who AREN’T we recruiting well (but want to) and does
our outreach & message hinder or help?
• Purchase by EN/HS Cluster in SSS
• Staff development, territory orientation

22. How Else Can We Use This Data?
• Admission decisions
• Financial aid prioritizing
• Admissions tie breaking
• Waitlist prioritizing
• Profile for campus audiences
• Persistence/retention analysis

23. Use Descriptor PLUS and EPS to:
• Find students who have characteristics like those
you are enrolling (those sending scores) (EPS)
• Find students who have characteristics that you
would like to enhance (EPS)
• Use D+ descriptions to target content of letters
when you know little about a student
• Enhance predictive modeling. Then target your
efforts where they will likely make the most
difference

24. Next Steps…
• Additional questions?
• How can we assist?

25. Contact Information
Marc Geslani
Higher Educational Manager
Midwestern Regional Office
mgeslani@collegeboard.org
847-653-4507