Contributed by: Ross Lenhart
Senior Vice President, Stein Communications

Recently for The Scoop, I have written reviews about two books that I admired, both of which dealt with student selectivity — College Unranked and The Price of Admission. Both involved the nuances of student selectivity — one dealing with the influence that a faulty ranking system has on the public; and the other, with the swaying power that wealth, alumni, and political clout exerts on the college admission selection process. I suppose I am somewhat of a college admission junky. This is completely understandable seeing that as a student, I first started giving college tours and answering questions of prospects and families in 1964; and then commenced with a profession involving the selection of the college a student plans to attend and why, and also the selection of whom a college accepts and why. The selection process has always been a source of great fascination to me. You have to admit — it’s a rather simple process — the student researches, visits, applies, and waits. The college recruits, gathers information, makes a decision, and informs the student of that decision. For over forty years in my professional life, this is the way it has been. For me, it has been the only way of making such a match.

I thought I knew it all, but by being an interested party in the future plans of my son and daughter-in-law, I have stumbled on a whole new system of student selection. It’s a match that happens annually in March. Not a tennis match, not a soccer match, this is another form of institutional people matching — a people match like none other. I became interested by watching my daughter-in-law, armed with her new M.D. degree from Emory, as she embarked on her journey to find her place as a resident in a teaching hospital — not unlike a high school senior in search of a college. As admission officers talk often and proudly about their medical school acceptance rates, they might want to follow their students a bit more closely after their college graduation and watch the process that confronts them in the fourth year of medical school as they head towards residency and internships. It’s a fascinating process of student selection of which I was never aware — a matching process that is actually called The Match.

You know the drill — in the early part of the 20th century, hospitals offered internships with short deadlines to medical students, who were forced to make decisions without knowing what other offers might be forthcoming. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? On the other hand, hospitals were being left out to dry because students rejected their offers, and it was too late for the hospital to approach the next preferred candidate, as he or she had already decided on another hospital. And don’t forget about the salary consideration here. After four years of college and four years of med school, these offers from hospitals aren’t quite the same financially, as say, six-figure top offers from law firms graduating law students after only three years. Realistically, it’s more like an offer of financial aid somewhat like a flat salary. Hospitals didn’t have a system of a Candidate’s Reply Date and then relying on a waiting list, or a system of rolling admission that we know in undergraduate college admission today. It was a lose-lose situation. Not good for the student; not good for the hospital.

Thus, in 1952, the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) was established; and since that time, medical students have applied to hospitals in their disciplines, whether it be family practice, pediatrics, or internal medicine, through the NRMP as a clearinghouse. Imagine how hard it was to get everyone to cooperate in order to get this system underway? But a week ago, approximately 15,000 medical school students found out through this year’s residency match where they will spend the next several years — some in far away places or in places they never really wanted to go.

This is where is gets hazy for me, and pardon me if I don’t get too detailed — but basically, The Match is a system that relies heavily on the process of algorithms for matching interns and residents with hospitals. In other words, and very simply put in my own elementary terminology — The Match uses a computer program to make an effective match of a resident with a teaching hospital through a nationwide system that honors the individual student choices of where he or she may want to spend his or her residency, and matches those choices together with the student recruitment desires and needs of the hospital. Rather confusing, but they do it, and it seems to work. Here again, amazing how all those hospitals and all those resident candidates can cooperate.

The Match works like clockwork. It’s set up on a system of firm dates and mandatory responses. In her search for her match for a residency in ophthalmology, my daughter-in-law flew at her own expense to eleven cities from Miami to Philadelphia to Charleston to Austin to others in order to have a personal interview. These trips served to personally set her own numerical priorities for The Match as well as to satisfy the match priorities of the hospital.

One might question the total financial outlay of the resident candidate when considering that the hospital also benefits in getting their match priorities in order. In the last few years, The Match has recently endured a challenge by a group of physicians through a class action lawsuit alleging that The Match has violated antitrust laws by claiming that NRMP practices encouraged lower-than-competitive wages and imposed exhausting working conditions on residents.

As gender enrollment patterns changed in medical schools so have the accommodation considerations of The Match. In 1952, when The Match was launched, only two out of every ten medical school graduates were females. When my daughter-in-law graduated from Emory Medical School, the gender ratio in her class was fifty-fifty. Also consider the marriages, engagements, or partnerships that are bound to happen for some med students after four years of working and studying together intensely. Not wanting to split these relationships geographically, the NRMP also has developed a system of a Couples Match, allowing those who are married, engaged, or partnered to be selected or matched to the same teaching hospital together.

Once the medical specialty is selected, the multiple interview trips around the country taken, the different paperwork steps followed minutely and on time, the fourth year med student waits until a seemingly never-ending drum roll takes him or her to the nail biting date of March 20th. Last week at exactly 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Daylight Time, 15,000 students ripped open envelopes all at the same time and learned where they will train as doctors for the next several years.

Is it a sane method of compatible student selectivity, or just plain March Madness? For the answer, you might just want to consult your physician.

Sources:
The Journal of The American Medical Association, February 19, 2003.
The New England Journal of Medicine, January 23, 2003.

Contributed by: Denis M. Stokes
Director of Admission, Christ School

Higher education has admittedly been marketing for more than 25 years. I’ve had the opportunity to witness the rise of educational marketing since the early 1980s when I started as a young admission representative and had the good fortune to work for one of the best promoters ever.

Robin Roberts, the Director of Admission at my former institution, had a brochure for everything and a tagline for just about everything. He put our small, invisible college on the fore of promotion. We were among the few, at our level of play, purchasing thousands of Search names, courting inquiries through a series of well-timed mailings, and following up — if you can imagine — by way of phone calls.

The results were a string of years where all the important numbers increased: inquiries, applications, accepted students, and enrolled students. The model served the institution well for more than a few years, in part because it recognized that attention to marketing fundamentals was critical — especially when most colleges at the time were not paying attention to the fundamentals, nor did they see the need to.

It didn’t take long before schools learned from each other and began promoting to a degree of new proportions. Hence, the capable sophomore or junior in high school now measures the amount of unsolicited college materials received not by the number of schools but, literally, by the box full.

In turn, the astute institutions began to recognize that marketing is more than one variable. Indeed, we know from Marketing 101 that marketing is multi-dimensional and includes Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

Promotion gets the most play in marketing because of its visibility and the creativity involved, whether in print, radio, TV, direct mail, or otherwise. However, the hard work of marketing is acknowledging and addressing its other variables. While most schools claim to have comprehensive, integrated marketing plans, I suggest they probably have something less. What they likely have are plans that articulate the tactics of promoting the institution.

Consider the task of creating and offering a new product or service. The creation of such does not begin with a well thought-out promotional effort. Rather, it begins first and foremost with recognition of unmet needs or underserved needs in the marketplace. Thus, the exercise begins by looking outward, beyond that in which the institution is already engaged.

In our world of admission, most of us are working for institutions that are well-established or at least that have been around for a long time. So, the idea of creating anew is unrealistic. The idea, though, of looking outward remains applicable, for there is still the question of which market segment to serve. An all too common mistake is for an institution to rely on the misguided notion that if they simply promote their school properly, they will be fine.

Practical Advice: Resist the urge to articulate only your institution’s uniqueness.

The reason most colleges and universities fall short of effective marketing: To do so would require courage, honesty, and patience. An article in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago had the following equation:

Success = D x V x C > R

D = Dissatisfaction with the status quo
V = Vision for the future
C = Courage to take the first steps
R = Resistance to change

Think about your institution. In relation to the above equation, what degree of success are you having in meeting objectives of enrollment, net revenue, reducing the discount rate, and fundraising? Consider each part, study each part, and then relate it to your institutional culture.

Tori Murden, the first American and first female to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, had this to say in 1999 shortly after her heroic feat of 81 days and nearly 3,000 miles: “Many of us lead lives that are too small, too confined, too constricted. I do not wish to do this.”

Institutions, like people, are guilty of thinking too small, too confined, and too constricted. Change — as well as success — begins with institutional self-awareness and an appropriate framework from which to operate. Setting goals is important, but so is a realistic sense of what can be accomplished.

If you are pressed to meet your institutional goals, use the fundamentals of marketing to begin the conversation on your campus about why you may be falling short. If honest discussion follows, then stay the course. Anything short of honest discussion will put you in choppy waters.

In the next issue of The Scoop, expect a continued discussion of marketing fundamentals, with a focus on Price and Place.

—
Denis M. Stokes is Director of Admission at Christ School, a traditional boarding and day school for boys, affiliated with the Episcopal Church, just south of Asheville, North Carolina.

Contributed by: Michael S. Hyatt
President and CEO, Thomas Nelson Publishers

In 1991 I, along with my business partner, suffered a financial meltdown. We had built a successful publishing company, but our growth outstripped our working capital. We simply ran out of cash.

For a while our distributor funded us in the form of cash advances on our sales. But eventually, their parent company wanted those advances back. Although we didn’t officially go bankrupt, the distributor essentially foreclosed on us and took over all our assets.

This was a difficult time personally. I was confused, frustrated, and very angry. Initially, I blamed the distributor. If they had only sold more, as they had promised us, none of this would have happened, I thought. It’s their fault.

But eventually I looked in the mirror and had to acknowledge that I could not move on until I learned from this experience. Though incredibly difficult and humbling, I am now thankful for this period in my life. I learned some critical, life-changing lessons. I am convinced that I would not be where I am today if I had not had this failure.

But not every failure ends so well. Sometimes, people suffer a setback and never recover. I don’t think it has to be this way. It is all in how you process it. I am convinced, that if you are going to succeed, you must learn to deal powerfully with failure.

I think there are at least five components to turning failure to your advantage:

Acknowledge the failure. This is where it begins. To my knowledge, I have never fired anyone for failing per se. Failure is natural if you are striving to deliver big results. The problem comes when you fail and then refuse to acknowledge it.

Several years ago, I had an employee who was floundering. He wasn’t delivering the results we expected. That was certainly a problem, but it wasn’t the primary problem. The problem was that he refused to acknowledge that he had a problem. He kept defending himself. In doing so, he only convinced us that he didn’t “get it.” As a result, we had no choice but to let him go.

Once you acknowledge failure, you take away its power. You can then begin to turn it into something positive.

Take full responsibility. You won’t get anywhere as long as you blame others for your failure. As long as the responsibility is external — outside of you — you are a victim. Why? Because you can’t control others. You can only control yourself.

But when you take responsibility for the failure and become fully accountable for it, you take back control. Suddenly you realize that you could have done things differently. You open the door to possibility — and to creating a different outcome in the future. But this can only happen when you acknowledge the failure and own it.

Mourn the failure. I am not simply exhorting you to have a positive attitude. Failure stings. It hurts — sometimes deeply. Many times there are very real and serious losses. Often times there is collateral damage. Other people are hurt. Sometimes innocent people.

It’s okay to feel sad about these things. Sometimes it takes a while to recover. When I had my financial setback in the early 90s, I mourned for weeks. It couldn’t be rushed. In fact, I think the reason I was able to bounce back relatively quickly was because I mourned the loss so deeply. I dealt with it thoroughly and got it behind me.

Learn from the experience. Even failure can be redemptive if you learn something from it. It doesn’t have to be career-ending. In fact, it can be career-building — if you take the time to wring all the juice out of the lemon.

Honestly, there are just some things you can’t learn — or won’t learn — without failing. I wish it were different. But pain is a powerful teacher. Like Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, once said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” So true. But it only makes us stronger if we thoroughly process the experience and determine what we could have done differently and will do differently next time around.

As Ilene Muething of Gap International has taught me, it is helpful to ask “What was missing?” rather than “What went wrong?” The former shuts down possibility and often results in blaming. The latter opens up possibility and results in learning.

Change your behavior. George Santayana, another philosopher, said, “Those who cannot learn from history are destined to repeat it.” And we really haven’t learned anything until it affects our behavior.

If we keep doing the same things that led to the failure, we are destined to get more failure. We have to be willing to change. And it really does start with us. This is the one thing we have control over.

Enter whole-heartedly into the next project. You can’t allow failure to hold you back from the next venture. If you fall off the horse or a bicycle, you have to get back on — immediately.

If you don’t do this, the failure gets magnified in your mind. Wait long enough and you might never get on at all! Instead, you have to put the past behind you and move forward.

Again, failure is inevitable if you are going to tackle significant goals. You have to learn to make it work for you. In doing so, you are planting the seeds of your eventual success.

—
(c) 2007, Michael S. Hyatt. Used by permission. Originally published at www.michaelhyatt.com.

Susquehanna brings home the Gold — and Silver and Bronze
Congratulations to Susquehanna University for winning the following Cuppie Awards from the College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania:

Print — Brochures 4-Color
GOLD — Campaign Case Statement: Changing Lives

Public Relations — Feature Article
SILVER — Learning to Fly

Public Relations — Special Event
BRONZE — Campaign Kickoff Teasers

Announcing the Annual Admissions Advertising Awards
Stein is excited to announce several winning pieces in the 23rd Annual Admissions Advertising Awards by Admissions Marketing Report.

Foxcroft School
Gold for Brochure: Secondary School
Bronze for Student Viewbook: Secondary School

Arizona State University
Merit for Direct Mail Advertising: School with 20,000 or more students

Georgian Court University
Merit for Annual Report: School with 2,000-4,999 students

Mike’s hopes for higher education in 2008
“I hope that we find ways to rise to the challenges of keeping higher education equitably accessible for all socioeconomic groups. I have the same hopes for equitable affordability for all of the same groups. We need to do our share to keep our American values of justice and fairness in place for the next generation.”
– Mike Maxey, President, Roanoke College

We welcome our new projects
We are pleased to announce new projects at the following institutions:
Houston Baptist University (TX)
Sewanee: University of the South (TN)