Increasingly, a prospective student's first formal interaction with a campus is his / her online application. Domestic students are well-entrenched in the trend, and a portion of international students are sure to follow (though perhaps at a lower rate, given the added complexities). These stealth applicants are seriously eroding the top half of the traditional enrollment funnel.

So what?

My co-presenter Marty Bennett documented the fact that his yield for inquiry to applicant was 13% in 1993. That ratio increased to 77% in 2008. Prospective students are quietly researching their options, and qualifying themselves before entering their names into a campus' customer relationship management database system.

Now what?

USjournal.com is recommending that all of our advertisers create a unique (specially-coded) online application, to which we can link from each advertiser's Profile Page and External Banners. A student's option to inquire via our current mechanism will continue, as the default. Advertisers may send their unique URL to cheryl@USjournal.com

Because USjournal.com does not impose limits to the number of words or images on our advertisers' Profile Pages, students may very well gather all the information they need within our family of multi-lingual sites, and ultimately may appreciate the convenience of skipping the inquiry step. Let me know what you think: cheryl@USjournal.com

mKhoj.com, a global mobile ad network based in India, highlighted USjournal.com's successful case study of Indonesia in the company's 5 May 2009 newsletter. mKhoj appreciates our focus on a few countries, rather than mass-broadcasting our message around the world. They've helped us improve our ROI by generating more qualified inquiries from the countries we target. We're much happier with mKhoj when compared to other, larger vendors who produce fewer inquiries at a much higher price.

Learn more: http://www.mKhoj.com/

* 2-5 November, Springfield, Massachusetts
NAFSA Bi-Regional (X and XI): http://www.region10.nafsa.org/

* 6-8 December, Miami, Florida
ICEF North America Workshop: http://www.icef.com/