How Illinois College Turned One Form Into 182% More Inquiries and 3.3x More Yield

Partner: Illinois College
Interviewed: Evan Wilson, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management
Product: AI Forms, Always-On Recruiter, Hub, Content Cards, Comeback Emails
Date: August 2026

“Halda doesn't wait for a renewal cycle to change something. They challenge us, they iterate mid-season, and help us respond to our needs in real time, not whatever the contract said a year ago."

— Evan Wilson, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management, Illinois College

Illinois College started working with Halda for a simple reason: its traditional RFI forms just weren’t cutting it. Associate vice president of enrollment management Evan Wilson and his team wanted a form that gave students a reason to fill it out, and they didn't have the in-house web development talent to build what they needed.

Halda's first answer was an AI form built around a scholarship calculator. Students got an estimate, and  Illinois College got a lead worth following up on. It went live within two weeks of signing the contract.

That was in 2022, just as AI was starting to become part of anyone's daily vocabulary. And what started as a single form has expanded into an omnichannel digital experience that responds to how each individual student has interacted with the site, including Halda’s Hub, content cards, student life quizzes, an AI recruiter and comeback emails. Wilson now points to Halda first whenever the president or board asks how his team is using AI.

“Halda's innovations coincided with what was happening in the market,” Wilson said. “So we were able to test AI agents and hub features with a trusted partner without needing to seek out alternative vendors.”

The Challenge: Static Forms in a 24/7 World

• Static RFI forms weren't producing meaningful leads, and the team lacked the web development talent to build something better in-house.
• Their CRM didn't support the on-site behavioral triggers needed to keep students engaged after they landed on a page.
• A growing, more diverse online program needed a way to answer prospective students' questions around the clock, without adding staff.
• Replacing the CRM outright to get modern AI tools felt like too much risk in an already volatile enrollment market.

The Solution: Small Bets That Added Up

• The AI forms scholarship calculator went live within two weeks, giving students a reason to convert and Illinois College its first real behavioral data.
• The partnership expanded step by step: an always-on recruiter,  website content hub, student life quizzes, AI content cards, and AI-driven comeback emails delivered through Slate.
• Illinois College’s four-person team meets biweekly with their Halda account manager to review performance and scope new features.
• Illinois College treats Halda as a low-risk way to test AI, since it layers onto Slate instead of requiring a CRM replacement.

"This isn't AI built by outsiders and sold to higher ed,” Wilson said. “It's built by people who've sat on our side of the desk."

The Results: A Yield Advantage That Keeps Growing

Illinois College is currently two years into a five-year plan to grow by roughly 400 new students by 2030, and to increase direct admission yield by 2%. Halda's first-year students are already yielding at more than 3x the rate of everyone else, which puts real weight behind that target.

182% — growth in Halda-engaged first-year inquiries, year over year

3.3x — admit-to-deposit yield versus students with no Halda touchpoint

55.8% — of online inquiries now carry a Halda ID

• First-year net deposits tied to a Halda-engaged inquiry grew more than 500% from fall 2025 to fall 2026, while inquiry volume grew 182%.
• Students with a Halda touchpoint deposited at 2.7 x the rate of students without one in fall 2025 (28.9% vs. 10.8%), and that gap widened to 3.3 x so far in the fall 2026 cycle (22.2% vs. 6.8%).
• Halda's reach in the online degree-completion pipeline nearly tripled, growing from 18.6% of inquiries to 55.8%, now more than half of that funnel. Wilson credits the placement of Halda forms on online program landing pages directly for the growth the college has seen there through organic lead generation.
• Transfer inquiries are up 26% year over year, and Halda-touched transfer admits are depositing at 1.6 x the rate of admits without a Halda ID, an early signal worth building on.

Fall 2026 figures are point-in-time as of July 2026 and will grow as the cycle closes.

“Halda doesn't wait for a renewal cycle to change something,” Wilson said. “They challenge us, they iterate mid-season, and they optimize toward whatever our goals are right now, not whatever the contract said a year ago."

What's Next: Betting on the Middle of the Funnel

Illinois College is evaluating Halda's AI campaigns to push mid-funnel conversion further.

Wilson recommends Halda to peer institutions specifically because of the low switching risk, and because Halda's team includes people who have worked enrollment and admissions from the inside, not a platform imported from outside the industry.

Conclusion

Illinois College didn't set out to build an AI strategy. It set out to fix a form. Five years later, Halda touches more than half of its online funnel and gives its first-year class a yield advantage the college is counting on to hit its 2030 enrollment goal.