Search and Shape Your Class

What is Search?

Learn the basics of student search

Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Current Strategy

Fully understand your current search strategy and pinpoint new opportunities

Solidify a Search Strategy That Grows Your Enrollment

Build a multi-year search strategy that includes families and sets you up for future success

Level 1: What Is Search?

Audience: Those new to enrollment

Level 2: Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Current Student Search Strategy

Audience: 1-2 years of enrollment experience

Level 3: Solidify a Search Strategy That Grows Your Enrollment

Audience: 2+ years of enrollment experience

Level 4: Shape an Incoming Class That Achieves Your Institutional Goals

Audience: Seasoned enrollment leaders

Level 5: Lead Your Institution To Excel in Your Markets

Audience: Expert enrollment leaders

Is your institution ready to maximize your search strategy and become the leader of your markets? This action plan empowers enrollment leaders to quickly and easily understand everything from the basics of student search to how to masterfully outshine your competitors in their own markets.

Whether you’re a new enrollment professional or more seasoned, we’ve got you covered. Using the table of contents above, start at the level that best suits where you’re ready to glean new strategies.

Level 1

What is Search?

What Is Search?

Every enrollment strategy starts with one question: Where do I find students to build my class? The answer begins with search.

Search is the process of identifying and connecting with students who may be a good fit for your institution and more importantly, search can empower you to stop guessing and start recruiting with purpose – using data to reach the students who matter most.

The first step? Acquiring student names.

How do I buy names and does it work?

Prospective student information is collected through college planning assessments, surveys, and academic platforms. These records can include key information like academic interests, geographic location, and graduation year. Search providers make this data available to your enrollment and marketing teams, so you can reach out before students even apply.

Level 2

Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Current Strategy

The first step to setting a search strategy for the year is having a clear understanding of what you have been doing in recent years.

Review Your Current Search Strategy

Have you been working with an outside vendor for student search or running your search fully in-house? Let’s discuss both below.

Understand Your Vendor’s Strategy

If you work with a vendor or agency, it’s possible that you may not know how your representative there has been choosing which students to acquire for your school.

In the case that your school works with a vendor, ask for an annual report and strategy summary to get a historical outlook of your search. This information should include a profile of previous acquisitions (e.g., graduation years, geography, academic profiles, etc.) and the parameters or filters they are using in their searches for you.

If you are an Encoura member, you will have access to all Encoura searches through Class Planner® on the Encoura Platform.

Understand Your In-House Search Strategy

If you run search internally, ask your admissions data processing or operations staff to pull the raw files of your original acquired student lists so that you can discern where your student search has been focused — including student demographics, interests, or geography.

Level 3

Solidify a Search Strategy That Grows Your Enrollment

Once you have a solid understanding of your institution’s current search strategy (see Level 2), it’s time to examine how you can strengthen your strategy to grow enrollment year over year.

The number one way to set your team up for future enrollment success is to build your pipeline sooner. Today’s best practice involves connecting with students – and their families – as early as possible.

Connect With Students & Families Early

Our Prospective Parent Research™ by Eduventures® found that about half of all parents/guardians are already considering colleges for their students by ninth grade. For parents of students with access factors (i.e., low-income, first-generation, or an underserved minority member), this number jumps even higher.

Source: The Eduventures 2025 Prospective Parent Research

Ensure that you are finding ways to get in touch with these college search influencers early. One easy way? Check out Encoura’s parent/guardian email addresses that are double-validated to assure you’re reaching family members who want to hear from you.

Level 4

Shape a Class That Achieves Your Institutional Goals

By now, you’ve laid the groundwork: you understand how search works, you've evaluated your current strategy, and you’ve taken steps to grow your funnel. Now it’s time to think bigger.

This next level is about shaping – not just filling – your incoming class. It’s about aligning enrollment strategies with institutional goals: growing specific academic programs, shifting your demographics, pursuing designations like HSI, or expanding your geographic reach.

In short: this is where enrollment strategy becomes institutional strategy.

Start With the Big Picture

This level often starts with a directive from leadership:

“We need more students in X program.”

“We want to improve our academic profile.”

“We’re aiming to serve more [insert population].”

These aren’t short-term fixes. They’re long-term goals. And shaping a class to meet them requires alignment across teams, access to the right tools, and a deep understanding of your market.

Level 5

Lead Your Institution To Excel in Your Markets

As a seasoned enrollment leader, you probably have a reliable search strategy that has met your past enrollment goals. Your last step to continually surpass your enrollment goals is to surpass your competition by becoming the leader in your markets.

Combine Search & Marketing to Outperform the Competition

With the right strategies, your institution can win the hearts of students before your competition in geographical and niche markets.

Know Your Competition

To lead your market, it’s essential to know who you’re competing against for students. While you may have an idea anecdotally of other colleges your prospective students are considering, enrollment technology like Insights Cloud™ gives insights with precise numbers of students considering you versus your competitors, as well as how many of those enroll in your institution versus theirs. You can also see specifically where these students ended up enrolling - which could be with other competitors you may not have considered.

Insights Cloud’s Competitive Analysis shows your student interest compared to competitors (“Visibility”), as well as enrollment share, by specific markets and interests. The filters applied here show Texas students interested in fields within Engineering and Technologies.

Ready To Take Action?

Search is your gateway to building a stronger enrollment funnel – but not just by doing more. By using the right data and insights, you can take control of your enrollment strategy from the jump. At Encoura, our Combined Data Set and Smart+® Predictive Model make that possible.

Now that you have a solid understanding of how student search works, continue on to level two in this action plan to start evaluating your school’s current strategy.

Read the Full Action Plan

To start at a specific level, or to read the entire action plan, fill out the form below. We’ll also email you a link so you can jump back in at any point.