May 1 Isn’t the Finish Line. It’s the Reveal.

For decades, May 1 has served as a symbolic deadline in admissions. The day decisions crystalize. The day “the class” takes shape. The day we find out how it all worked.

But May 1 is not a finish line. It’s a reveal.

It tells you which students said yes. It tells you who your efforts reached—and who slipped away. It tells you what was effective, and what might have felt right but didn’t deliver.

The number you see on May 1 is the outcome. But it’s also the evidence. A mirror held up to the last six months of your work.

That’s not to take away from the celebration. It’s hard work to get to this point. But we should be clear-eyed about what this moment actually is:

It’s a dataset. And what it reveals is how your institution performed under pressure.

• Did your team have enough clarity on where to focus?

• Were you able to identify students who were drifting before it was too late?

• Were your aid offers reaching the right students—or just being distributed widely?

• Did your counselors spend more time triaging data or building relationships?

Every enrollment outcome points backward to a process. And May 1 is your best opportunity to study that process—before summer hits, and the cycle starts again.

The truth is, most of the decisions that led to today’s results weren’t made last week. They were made months ago—sometimes by students, but often by institutions. In what we prioritized. In who we followed up with. In what we didn’t see coming.

May 1 isn’t the end of yield season. It’s the start of your insight season.

The question now is simple: What will you learn?

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As you consider how and why students made the decisions they did, I encourage you to check out an "oldie but goodie" - one of the first webinars enroll ml offered, where we discussed Consumer Decision Journey theory, and how it applies to college admissions.

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