Enrollment Strategy
The assumption many enrollment leaders share goes something like this: “We know our response times aren’t perfect, but they’re manageable.”
Translation: nothing has broken loudly enough yet to force change. And according to UPCEA’s latest data, that’s costing you students.
UPCEA recently conducted a secret shopper study, sending 1,000 inquiries to 164 institutions during the height of the recruitment cycle. What they found was startling. In addition to slow response times, the study found that nearly half of all inquiries (44%) never received a response at all.
Let that sink in. In an era of expensive digital ads and sophisticated CRMs, almost half of prospective students raising their hands are being met with total silence.
But the cracks weren’t the biggest surprise. It was how early and how often they appear under pressure. Deadline season can strain enrollment systems and expose exactly how many are quietly failing prospects at the moment support matters most.
Why January Changes Everything
In October, a slow response is a nuisance. In January, it’s a verdict. A prospective student might be browsing, comparing options, or just dipping a toe in the water. But in January silence is a nonstarter.
The students reaching out right now are decision-ready prospects facing hard deadlines for applications and FAFSA submissions. Their questions are urgent, specific, and emotionally loaded. When they reach out, they aren't looking for a nurture sequence; they’re looking for a lifeline.
Systems built for drip campaigns collapse under urgency, but systems built for moments (like January) don’t. That difference comes down to whether your platform can triage, prioritize, and respond in real time.
If your system treats a panicked January inquiry the same way it treats a casual October request, you’re losing leads and trust.
Deadline Season as a Stress Test
Think of deadline season not as a hurdle to clear, but as a structural stress test.
You have high inquiry volume, limited staff bandwidth, and zero patience from the market. This pressure reveals the processes that were never built to scale in the first place.
When a bridge collapses, you can’t blame the heavy truck driving over it. Blame the design that couldn't handle the load. Right now, your enrollment funnel is bearing the weight of the entire recruitment cycle, but is it holding up?
What the Data Revealed (And Why It Caught Us Off Guard)
We expected to see delays, but we didn't expect to see a total breakdown in communication.
Here are some of the hard numbers from UPCEA’s report, Enrollment Process Review: Secret Shopper Analysis:
- 44% of inquiries received no response. That’s up from 40% in 2023.
- The median response time is 3 hours and 18 minutes. On the surface, that looks reasonable.
- The average response time is 14 hours and 23 minutes. Uh oh.
Why the massive gap between median and average? Because the averages are being dragged down by extreme delays, like responses that take days, or even weeks.
CRM adoption is widespread. Automation tools are everywhere. We’ve spent years focusing on inquiry management. But even with better tools, our outcomes are getting worse. The tech improved, but the engagement didn't.
Where Systems Fail First Under Pressure
When you drill down into the data, you can see exactly where the leakage is happening, and it isn’t evenly distributed.
The most fragile point in the funnel is the email inquiry.
- 62% of emails sent to individual staff members went unanswered.
- 40% of emails sent to centralized inboxes (like admissions@university.edu) went unanswered.
Compare that to RFI forms, where the non-response rate was significantly lower (though still insanely high at 37%).
Why does email fail so spectacularly? Because it usually relies on human memory, bandwidth, and heroics. An email sent to an individual counselor during peak season is an email that’s destined to be buried. It is rarely captured in the CRM, offers zero visibility to leadership, and has no safety net.
Deadline season punishes anything that depends on manual work. If your process relies on a human remembering to check a shared inbox, you’ve already lost.
Structure Either Holds Or It Doesn’t
The contrast between unstructured email and structured RFI forms tells the whole story.
- 78% of RFI inquiries entered a nurture flow or received promotional materials.
- Only 2% of email inquiries received ongoing engagement.
While we talk a lot about students’ preferred channels, there’s a bigger story here about whether an inquiry enters a system or disappears into the void.
When a student fills out a form, the machine takes over. When they send an email, they’re at the mercy of a stressed-out staff member’s inbox. The difference between the two isn't just a data point; it's the difference between a student feeling seen and a student feeling ignored.
FAFSA Season Raises the Stakes Even Higher
This cycle, FAFSA is still in the middle of its “simplification” makeover that started in the 2024-25 cycle, with calendar and policy changes sprinkled into the mix. Families still support as much as ever, and prospects are asking direct, nuanced questions about financial aid.
Yet, UPCEA’s study found that 75% of RFI forms don’t even offer a text field for questions.
We’re forcing students to fit their complex anxieties into drop-down menus. And when they do manage to ask a question with an email, the response is usually a generic link instead of meaningful guidance.
An interesting observation: When questions are invited on RFI forms, engagement goes up. The data shows that while response times might be slightly slower for personalized answers, the quality of that interaction skyrockets. Students don't want a link to a FAQ page; they want to know if they can afford your school.
What Strong Systems Reveal Instead
It wasn't all bad news. Some institutions passed the stress test with flying colors.
The systems that held up shared specific characteristics:
- Centralized Intake: Inquiries weren't routed to individuals; they went to a managed queue.
- Clear Ownership: There was no ambiguity about who was responsible for a response.
- Smart Automation: Acknowledgments were immediate but felt personal, buying time for a human to follow up.
- Visibility: Leadership could see exactly how many inquiries were sitting unanswered.
Improvement is possible. The data shows that pockets of excellence exist where institutions have decided to treat inquiry management as a strategic operation instead of an administrative chore.
January as a Diagnostic, Not Just a Deadline
Instead of thinking of January as a month to survive, use it as a diagnostic tool.
This is your clearest window into inquiry-to-app leakage and see a live audit of your operations. Instead of pushing your team to work harder, ask the hard questions:
- Where do inquiries stall when volume spikes?
- Which channels break first?
- What happens to an email sent to your financial aid office at 4:55 p.m. on a Friday?
What This Means for Partners Right Now
We know your teams are stretched and the pressure is very real.
But missed inquiries are a design problem instead of a capacity problem. You can’t hire enough counselors to solve a broken process.
Institutions need infrastructure that absorbs shock instead of passing it on to students. You need tools that keep students visible even when your team is overwhelmed. Platforms like Halda are built for exactly this moment—centralizing intake, prioritizing urgency, and using AI to handle after-hours and peak-volume questions without dropping context. Whether that’s AI agents that handle the 10 p.m. panic texts or a centralized platform that ensures no email slips through the cracks, the goal is the same: resilience.
The Surprise Is the Point
We didn’t expect the gaps to be this wide or to see nearly half of all inquiries go unanswered. But the data makes it undeniable.
The institutions that pay attention to what January exposes will improve their deadline outcomes and build stronger, more resilient funnels that capture intent year-round.
