Why Enrollment Teams Need To Take a Page from Athletic Recruitment

Previously viewed as both unfeasible and inequitable by traditional admissions teams, perhaps now is the time to take a valuable page from athletic recruiting.

The resistance makes sense. Athletic recruitment operates in a different universe. Coaches build intimate relationships with a handful of prospects, spending months or even years cultivating individual athletes. Meanwhile, traditional admissions manages thousands of applications with standardized processes and mass communications. The math alone seems to make the comparison ridiculous.

But the math is changing.

The constraints are quickly being mitigated through the power of precisely deployed AI. And those equity concerns about personalized attention creating unfair advantages may actually be backwards.

The False Choice We've Accepted

Higher education has bought into a premise that's increasingly false: that you must choose between broad reach and deep connection. That meaningful relationships don't scale. That personalization is a luxury reserved for the few.

This was the best execution possible when student signals were stronger and students were more prevalent. When the choice was between sending 10,000 identical letters or making 100 personal phone calls. That choice no longer exists.

AI isn't just identifying behavioral patterns. It's doing the heavy lifting on what used to be the most time-consuming part of recruitment: creating a deeply individualized view and strategy for each student. What once required hours of manual research can now be synthesized instantly, giving counselors rich, contextual intelligence about each prospect.

This isn't about replacing human judgment. It's about amplifying human insight so that truly personalized engagement becomes possible at scale.

Getting "Fair" Wrong

The most common objection isn't about capacity. It's about fairness. "We should treat all students equally." It sounds right. It feels right. And it's the wrong way to think about enrollment strategy.

The current system already treats students differently. It just does so inefficiently. Students who know how to signal interest get more attention. Those who visit campus get prioritized. Early applicants get tracked more closely. Students who respond quickly to emails stay on active lists longer.

The difference is that these distinctions aren't strategic. They're accidental. We're already personalizing, but we're doing it based on student behavior we can easily measure rather than student behavior that actually predicts enrollment.

Athletic-style recruitment simply makes the prioritization intentional. Instead of giving more attention to students who happen to fit our existing processes, we focus on students where deeper engagement could actually move the needle on enrollment.

This isn't about favoring some students over others. It's about recognizing that not every prospect is at the same decision point or has the same likelihood of converting. Some students have already mentally committed elsewhere. Others are genuinely weighing options and could be influenced by the right conversation at the right time. And some are stuck, interested but uncertain, needing guidance to move forward.

Treating all these students identically isn't fair. It's wasteful. It means counselors spend equal time on students who've already decided and students who are actively deciding. It means missing opportunities to help students who want to say yes but don't know how.

Strategic prioritization means focusing personalized attention where it can actually make a difference. On the students who are still in play, still considering your institution, and most likely to benefit from individual engagement.

Five Strategies That Transfer

The best athletic programs don't just recruit harder. They recruit smarter. Their approach offers a blueprint that traditional admissions can adapt:

Deep, Sustained Personalization: Coaches know their prospects' stories, not just their stats. Modern systems can provide counselors with comprehensive individual profiles that synthesize behavioral data, engagement patterns, and communication preferences to enable genuinely personalized conversations.

Focus on Fit and Contribution: Athletic recruitment excels at helping prospects see their specific role in the program's future. Technology can analyze a student's interests and engagement behaviors to help counselors articulate precisely how that individual would contribute to and benefit from the institutional community.

Proactive, Behavioral-Driven Outreach: Coaches respond to subtle cues. A change in performance, a comment during a visit, a shift in communication patterns. Similar behavioral signals can now be detected while simultaneously suggesting individualized outreach strategies and timing recommendations based on each student's engagement history.

A "Wanted" Mindset: Every coaching interaction communicates value and desire. Enhanced individual profiling ensures that counselors can demonstrate genuine knowledge of each student's interests and concerns, making every interaction feel specifically crafted rather than generally welcoming.

Strategic Prioritization: Coaches don't recruit every athlete equally. They focus intensive efforts where they can make the biggest difference. Technology can identify not just which students need attention, but what type of attention each student needs, when they need it, and how they're most likely to respond.

What You Can Do With Your Teams Now

Here's what you can do with your teams now to leverage the most powerful student-connecting elements of athletic recruiting into your everyday processes:

Start Daily with Motion, Not Lists: Instead of having counselors work static territory assignments, begin each day by identifying 8-12 students showing real behavioral movement in the last 48 hours. Who logged in after weeks of silence? Who suddenly engaged with financial aid content? Who visited the same program page three times? This shifts focus from coverage to impact.

Audit Your "Personal" Communications: Review your last five "personalized" emails. Do they demonstrate that you've been paying attention to what this specific student has done, or are they just mail merge with better formatting? True personalization proves you've noticed their behavior, not just their demographics.

Implement the 72-Hour Response Rule: When students show engagement spikes (multiple portal visits, email opens followed by website activity, sudden interest in specific content) respond within 72 hours with something that acknowledges their behavior. "Saw you've been looking at our engineering program. Want to talk with someone in the department?"

Kill Comfort Metrics: Stop celebrating FAFSA completions, visit registrations, or email opens as if they predict enrollment. Start tracking behavioral sequences instead: What do students do after they visit? How does engagement change following specific touchpoints? Focus on motion, not milestones.

Create Counselor Intelligence Briefs: Before any student interaction, give counselors a 30-second intelligence brief: recent portal activity, content engagement patterns, communication responsiveness, and decision urgency signals. This transforms conversations from generic check-ins to informed consultations.

Train for the "Wanted" Conversation: Athletic coaches excel at making prospects feel specifically desired, not generally welcomed. Train your team to move beyond "How can I help?" to "Here's why you'd thrive here specifically" based on what they know about that student's interests and engagement patterns.

The goal isn't perfection. It's precision. Focus your team's finite time and energy on students who are genuinely in play, showing real signals, and most likely to benefit from human connection.