The document defines how student referral sources are tracked within a graduate admissions system. It outlines three fields - Created Source Code ID, How Did You Hear of Us, and Referral Source. Created Source Code ID is automatically generated or manually entered. How Did You Hear of Us contains a student's response to how they learned of the program. Referral Source categorizes sources for reporting purposes, populated through daily edits linking the other two fields. This new process allows for detailed source tracking through How Did You Hear of Us or categorized reporting via Referral Source.

1. Referral Source DefinitionsGraduate Admissions<br />Updated 4/1/11<br />Scope:Tracking students has grown increasingly difficult with varied source codes and a wealth of responses to “How did you hear about us.” This document herein attempts to clarify a means to appropriately track referring sources for student prospects. TrackingField Definitions:Tracking of students occurs in one of three ways:Created Source Code IDThis ID is created automatically if a student enters the system via an inquiry page or an automatic import. This ID can also be generated manually by users who input new records based on the source of the inquiry. This is a required field during manual entry. How Did You Hear of UsThis field is populated by a student answer to the question on an interest page or an application. If provided to a UNH user entering new prospects, this information can be entered manually; however, it should never be assumed if not clear from the prospect and should thus be left empty. This field includes specific referral sources such as GradSchools.com, Facebook, Newspaper Ad, Friend/Family/Alumni, and others. It can be expanded with specific source names if requested.Referral SourceThis field is populated by a series of bulk edits in the system that compiles data from both the Created Source Code ID and How Did You Hear of Us attributes. This attribute serves as a means of categorizing student data. This field includes sources such as Internet, Social Networks, Print or Web-Based Guides, Word of Mouth, and more. Tracking Issues:Prior to the establishment of the new “Referral Source” attribute, determining the source of a student record for ROI strategy was extremely difficult as users would have to use both “Created Source Code ID” and “How Did You Hear of Us” fields for reporting purposes. The added “Referral Source” attribute allows us to make strategic decisions on how to more appropriately track students.New Tracking Process:Students and users will continue to use the “Created Source Code ID” field and populate the “How Did You Hear of Us” fields when student answers are provided. The new process involves two key cornerstone initiatives:The “How Did You Hear of Us” attribute will become a central repository for all referral source codes. Student-provided answers combined with created source code ID values will give us a comprehensive list of detailed source codes. These source codes can be as detailed as a specific newspaper title, website, or directory name.The “Referral Source” attribute will serve as a means to categorize all of our sources for reporting purposes. For example, GradSchools.com, GraduateGuide.com, and Petersons.com will all be listed as “Print or Web-Based Directory.” How this is all accomplished:Through a series of bulk edits set up in the system, the system will look every morning for students with specific values in both the “How Did You Hear of Us” and “Created Source Code ID” attributes and perform the appropriate edits to each student record. The “Created Source Code ID” will never change; the “How Did You Hear of Us” attribute will change only if the question is empty.Please refer to the source diagrams on the attached addendum for details on how sources will be reflected in the “Referral Source” attribute. What this means to you:You can now run a detailed report of all sources for a given student pool (How Did You Hear of Us attribute) or report on students using a condensed list of referral source categories (Referral Source attribute). The goal of this initiative is to provide you with useful data to make informed strategic decisions on how to best allocate resources to build our prospect pool.Addendum: Referral Source Input Maps<br />I. Print or Web-Based Directories<br />centerbottom<br />II. Word of Mouth<br />III. Purchased Lists<br />IV. Fair/Expo/Tour<br />V. Social Networks<br />VI. Internet<br />VII. Other<br />*Note: Television is included because we do not regularly utilize television advertising. When we begin to use it again, we can create a separate category. The Newspaper/Radio/TV Ad category is old and does not provided specific data to categorize it specifically with newspaper, radio, or TV. All new prospects are sourced more specifically based on how they learned about us.<br />