657 Hours You Don't Have

A couple years ago, we asked 22 admissions leaders a simple question: How much time does your team spend just trying to figure out who to engage each day?

The answer? On average, 657 hours per counselor, per year.

That’s over 30% of their total working time. And none of it involves talking to students.

Those 657 hours are spent inside CRMs, combing through spreadsheets, building lists, pulling queries, formatting exports, reviewing funnel reports, and rebuilding filters that were supposed to help but often don’t.

It’s not the work counselors were hired to do. But it’s the work they’ve had to take on—because most systems don’t tell them what matters until it’s too late.

Time Isn’t the Problem. Precision Is.

We talk a lot about how enrollment work is harder than it used to be. Fewer students. More applications. Higher expectations. Less clarity. That’s all true.

But we talk less about how counselors are spending their time—and whether the institution is asking them to be analysts or advocates.

The problem isn’t that counselors aren’t working hard. It’s that they’re often working blind.

What we saw in the time study was not laziness or inefficiency. It was compensation—counselors making up for a lack of clarity with brute force effort. Running queries they shouldn’t have to run. Manually checking lists that should already be prioritized. Writing their own notes, filters, and flags to patch over the fact that the system isn’t telling them what they actually need to know.

And every hour they spend doing that is an hour they don’t spend building relationships with students.

The Hidden Cost of "Data Wrangling"

Here’s what we don’t say out loud often enough:

Many of your best counselors are spending their day inside the CRM instead of in conversation with families.

They’re doing manual work that should have been automated. They’re guessing when they should be guided.

In some offices, that work is considered a badge of honor. “She’s great with Excel.” “He builds the best call lists.” But if the goal is to build relationships and drive enrollment, why are we celebrating skills that pull counselors away from students?

The institution doesn’t benefit when your best recruiter becomes your best query writer.

Reclaiming the 657 Hours

At enroll ml, we’ve seen what happens when you return those hours to your team.

When Illinois College implemented enroll ml, counselors gained back an estimated 500 hours per year. That time went directly into higher-impact work: more outreach, more personalization, better follow-up, and faster intervention.

And because the platform delivers ranked daily priorities—not just raw data—counselors no longer had to guess. They could start each day knowing exactly who needed attention, and why.

It’s not magic. It’s just a better allocation of time.

The New Capacity Model

As you head into next-cycle enrollment planning—or begin staffing discussions for the fall—it’s worth asking:

What would your team do with 657 hours back? What if every counselor had the capacity to focus on 15 more high-potential students? What if they spent less time sorting and more time converting?

We’re often asked how to “scale” counselor impact without hiring more people. This is the answer. Not headcount, but headspace. Not just more effort, but better direction.

It’s not about working harder. It’s about removing the noise, so counselors can spend time where it matters most.