Effective College Recruitment Strategies to Boost Enrollment

In this episode of FYI we discuss the important role empathy plays in the college recruitment process and the importance of creating an inclusive environment.

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Who is Anthony Perez?

Anthony Perez is the Assistant Director of Admissions, Multicultural Recruitment and Outreach at Western Michigan University.

In this Episode

Anthony Perez, Assistant Director of Admissions, Multicultural Recruitment and Outreach at Western Michigan University, joins FYI host Gil Rogers to talk about his journey of being a first-generation college student from Texas through Iowa and to holding his current role in Michigan. 

The discussion covers the importance of creating an inclusive college environment, practical advice for first-time college applicants, and how institutions can improve their engagement with first-generation and underserved students. 

Anthony emphasizes the need for more personalized, human-centered interactions in the admissions process and offers strategies for balancing data-driven decisions with the wisdom of lived experiences.

Listen to FYI on your favorite podcast platform!

Episode Transcript

Effective Recruitment Strategies with Anthony Perez

Publishing Date: September 10, 2024

[00:00:00] Gil: Welcome back to FYI, the For Your Institution Podcast, presented by Mongoose. I’m your host, Gil Rogers. And today, I am joined by the Assistant Director of Admissions, Multicultural Recruitment and Outreach for Western Michigan University, Anthony Perez. Anthony and I have a candid conversation about what it means to truly build an inclusive community, as well as support students who are going through the college search for the first time. Let’s listen in.

There he is.

[00:00:38] Anthony: How’s it going?

[00:00:39] Gil: How are you, Anthony?

[00:00:41] Anthony: Not too bad. It’s Tuesday, and it’s a great day in the office of admissions.

[00:00:46] Gil: There we go. There we go. You know what’s great is that this podcast drops on Tuesdays. So, we’re going to leave that in as it’s Tuesday.

[00:00:56] Anthony: We love it.

[00:00:57] Gil: That worked. It always gets me when there’s, like, the podcast that they record ahead of time and they say the actual date in the episode drop. They’re like, “Today is Tuesday, March 15th.” And you’re like, yeah, but it’s actually June now, because by the time it…  depending on the calendar and all that sort of stuff. So, this one, we dropped this one every week, though. So, we should get to you rather quickly. So, how are things in Michigan?

[00:01:24] Anthony: Things are good. We had a pretty nasty storm that came through last night, but beyond that, things are good. It’s finally a nice summer day. This past weekend was a great weekend to be at the beach in South Haven and St. Joe. So, definitely enjoying the change in weather, but trying to, hopefully, get away from some of these storms.

[00:01:46] Gil: Yeah, I’m based in Maine, and it’s been a hot and humid summer, so far, which is great for pool weather, not so great for an office that has bad circulation. But, you know, it is what it is.

[00:02:00] Anthony: Understandable.

[00:02:01] Gil: So, for our YouTube viewers, where in Michigan is Western Michigan University, if you point to the mitten, because that’s what people in Michigan do, right?

[00:02:11] Anthony: Yep. So, if you’re looking at the mitten, we’re about right here.

[00:02:15] Gil: Boom! I feel like everybody’s about right there. That’s the weird thing. Like, no matter what, everybody’s, “That’s right here,” like, who’s under it?

[00:02:22] Anthony: You got all the people up in Mackinac and Grand Traverse City.

[00:02:28] Gil: Yeah, yeah. Well, those folks, it’s all good, it’s all good. But we’re focused on here where you are today. So, for our audience, for people who might not know you, who are you? We’ll start that again. For our listeners, give us a little bit of your background, where you’re from, how you got to Western Michigan. I know you started there, left, came back. I did a little professional LinkedIn stocking of your roles and how you got into the role you’re at today.

[00:02:55] Anthony: Yeah, so my name is Anthony Perez. I use he/him/his pronouns. I’m originally from San Antonio, Texas, and I got my bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Iowa. Got my master’s degree from Western Michigan University in 2020, the fateful year that we all remember. And then, I start my doctorate of education back at the University of Northern Iowa, virtually, this fall.

I started my career in Iowa, mostly because… oh, I should also allude that I am a first-generation college student. So, that’s something that’s very key and big to me. And it’s the primary focus of the work that I do. And it was an out-of-state scholarship that took me to Iowa. Everybody asks, why Iowa? That’s always my response.

And then, when I look at Western, I had a conversation with my ambassador, mentor at the time. They said, you know, whenever you talk about industrial organizational psychology, it’s a by-the-textbook definition, but as an RA, as a student ambassador, whenever we talk about those experiences, there’s this new light and energy about you.

And for me, she encouraged me to look into student affairs. I had no clue what that meant or what it did, but I knew that there was this big thing that took place in Oshkosh, Wisconsin called the Oshkosh Placement Exchange. Went through and interviewed with 17 schools across the U.S. And it was a very busy weekend. I ended up getting a graduate assistantship offered to me by Western Michigan University through Housing and Residence Life. Started there, then found out that student conduct is not my vibe and living in the residence halls as a full-time professional is a little bit more challenging than being an RA.

So, I was looking for some new opportunities, was offered an ACUHO-I internship at Louisiana State University as a conference intern. Did that for a few months while I was job-searching and trying to figure out, how am I going to pay for my master’s degree? Finally landed a job in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences as the Recruitment and Outreach Specialist for Chemical and Paper Engineering. I should preface, my background is in psychology and criminology, nothing to do with engineering or mathematics. Stayed away from that as much as I could in undergrad.

And, you know, my mentor in the engineering college had a conversation with me when an opening became available for admissions, said, “You need to go. Broaden your horizons, meet more students, and broaden the people that you’re talking to. And if you don’t, I’m going to kick you out myself.” So, I applied for a role in admissions and was there for about three years before I took on a new position at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Found out that the private small school liberal arts was not my vibe, just because of somebody that I am of focusing on access inclusion and getting students to see that they can make it in college.

I had the opportunity to be shoulder-tapped by my previous supervisor to say, “Hey, we have a new job opportunity for you to apply for that I think you’d be a great fit,” which is my current role as the Assistant Director of Admissions for Multicultural Recruitment and Outreach.

[00:05:54] Gil: That’s a great path, and there’s a lot there. I’m going to bring you back to the very beginning. And you mentioned you’re from Texas.

[00:06:01] Anthony: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:02] Gil: A school in Iowa. And you mentioned that there was an out-of-state scholarship. But as a first-generation student going to college, leaving Texas, to go to Iowa, it had to be more than just the scholarship that brought you there. And thinking about it through the lens of a student today who is going through the college search process for the first time, there are a lot of other factors besides this. I mean, obviously the scholarship’s a great contributing factor. It helps. But what were some of the other reasons that you, kind of, started? Because I feel like that’s your superhero origin story of getting to where you are now in the role that you have now, was the decisions that led you to go from Texas to Iowa to go to school.

[00:06:44] Anthony: So, for me, the true reason why I went to Iowa, when I was in high school, I went to a small private Christian college prep school that was focused on embedding college as a pathway that we need to be investing and investigating. And so, I didn’t know much about it. I went to one college fair my entire high school career. And I visited one school out of the 17 that I applied to, and that was University of Northern Iowa. And it was the experience that I had on campus, the people that I met, the feelings that I had while I was present there in person. They made me feel at home. And I knew that, regardless of whether I got the scholarship that I was competing for or not, that was going to be the place that I was going to choose, simply because of the experiences that made me feel comfortable.

And that’s what I tell all of the students that I work with today. And I work with students that are very close to Western in the Kalamazoo area. And they all are a little nervous about choosing a school that’s right down the road from where they live. So, I share the experience of college is an extension of high school in a way that you don’t expect, because it’s new, it’s a little nerve-wracking to have this experience, but when you get on campus, it’s its own community, it’s an own environment, and so you have to experience it for what it’s worth.

You may live right down the road or you may live from out of state, but when you come to visit campus, I always encourage students, wear your backpack and really feel what it’s like to be a student on that campus, right? Feel the life that you would be living. Envision yourself as you’re walking through these buildings. Where can I see myself spending time on campus? And so, for me, being able to have that and have the small style classes that was about what I was comfortable with in high school at the same level in college was really what made me feel comfortable choosing UNI, University of Northern Iowa, as my college.

[00:08:46] Gil: Awesome!

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[00:09:38] Gil: And so, now, we’ll fast-forward all the way to the current position, right, and say, what are some things that, you know, you did a really good job of making recommendations to students about handling the process and going through the process because they haven’t done this before, right? And so, what are some things that institutions should be doing that, in your observation, could be improved upon to help students have that feeling of fit that you mentioned, right, like, that to me is one of the biggest things that we talk about all the time in the higher ed ecosystem is that feeling of fit when that student sets foot on that campus or has that interaction with an admissions counselor or a tour guide or professor or whatever it is.

And at the end of the day, I feel like we keep talking about it, but there’s still many places where we fall short, right? And so, I’d love for you to share some of your thoughts on that, specifically, of how can institutions improve specifically with attracting and engaging first-generation students or underserved communities that you see that there are places where they need to do a little bit of work?

[00:10:42] Anthony: I’m glad that you asked this question. And in all honesty, part of it is get rid of the robotic responses that have just become an automatic reply to every student that comes up to you in a college fair setting, in an admissions presentation. Everybody asks the same questions when they get to your table. “Oh, what are you interested in studying? What can I tell you about our university?” But instead, invest in what we are all responsible for, which is relationship building. Ask that student, what are you passionate about? What excites you about our institution? Have you ever been to our institution? What do you already know so that I’m not covering a bunch of things that you’re already familiar with?”

But my favorite one is when students come up to me and they ask me, “What are your most popular majors?” And my response to them is, “I can tell you what all of our popular majors are or what our most well-known and recognized programs are, but I know that that’s not what’s important to you. So, let me ask, what is it specifically that you’re looking for out of those popular programs or out of those most notable that excites you, right?”

The more that you can invest in these students to get them opening up to talking about themselves, because a lot of these students, especially for first-gen students who don’t have what is deemed the social capital, meaning their parents haven’t necessarily gone through the process or their family members may not have gone through the process, so they don’t know what that’s like, that social capital, then, they don’t know what questions to ask. They may not have thought, “What do I really want to look for out of a college experience?”

Because in most cases, most students, when you ask them, “Oh, where are you planning on going to college?” Not as a college rep, they’ll say, University of Texas at Austin, Michigan State, Indiana University, right? Because they know those schools and they’re familiar with them because of their media presence. There are so many schools that exist in the United States that go unknown or passed over unless the student lives in that state, area, or has been in contact with somebody from that organization.

So, the best way that I can tell universities or admissions professionals to start breaking down some of those barriers is stop asking the same questions and really get to know the students that you’re working with. Spend time also getting to know the parents, because this is a nerve-wracking process. As a first-gen student, my parents didn’t know anything about the college search process or how to help me, what it meant to apply. So, provide those services, whether it’s in a virtual format, a handout, something that helps demystify the college search process.

And that’s what I’ve started within my role, which was basically brand new as of two and a half years ago. I started this series that I do every fall, called College 101. In September, we’ll launch one that’s all about applying to schools, what it means to apply early action versus early decision or, what it means to be committed and not committed. And then, in October, we talk about navigating the college search process, as you’re going on campus tours and visits, how do you discover what your fit is and the vibe that you’re looking for? And then, in November, we talk about investing in your future, right, finding those scholarships that are both at the institution, but also in other areas and resources available online that go unexplored because students don’t know about it.

[00:14:08] Gil: You mentioned about the automated or automatic responses or canned responses that the institutions have. I was reading an article the other day, that Starbucks, actually, is rethinking its model, because as time has gone on, they’ve become an assembly line where, you know, the old feeling of going to a Starbucks was the feeling of going to Starbucks, the experience. And now, it’s just, kind of, you just go up, you get your drink, you move on with your life, right? And that’s impacting sales negatively because people are overpaying for coffee without that level of experience.

And so, through the rush to efficiency and the rush to making everything consistent, they have lost a little bit of that personality, a little bit of that luster, right? And I think that, in higher ed, there are some parallels here, where, with automation, with CRM platforms, with chatbots, with these sorts of tools and resources, there are positives, for sure, in the efficiencies and effectiveness of being able to be a 24/7 responsive, but we’ve got to find that human and technology balance when it comes to the use of these types of resources, particularly, for marginalized communities or underserved communities who the standard response doesn’t apply to them all the time, right? Because there are exceptions to the rule. There are exceptions in these processes. And when you get that canned response that’s, kind of, like a, you know, tough luck response when the application process or deadlines or fees or whatever it is, it can turn students away, right?

Now, to that end, how do we juggle that, from your perspective, how would you think about juggling that with, you know, we want to make the process more personal, we need to be attentive, we need to provide that one-on-one, but we also don’t want to burn out our staff asking them to be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, being completely responsive, being shorthanded because of the great resignation or staff shortages, etc.? Where is that in between, and how do we make sure that in between doesn’t create a crack that these students specifically fall through?

[00:16:13] Anthony: It’s about analyzing the capacity of your institution, your office, as well as understanding what tools you have at your disposal, right, because you can set up a lot of these AI bots and such to have that personalized or humanistic feel to it. And if you’re working with your vendors or your partners, you can really assess, what does the tone sound like? And making sure that the responses that it’s giving are responses that somebody that you’re having this one-on-one conversation with would give, right?

We want to also make sure that there are times when students go on visits to campuses and there’s not an admissions counselor available post tour to have a conversation. How do you, then, make that attention to that gap, right? How do you ensure that, whenever a student comes to your campus, that you’re there to serve them or that there’s the capacity to provide that friendly service, right? We’re a customer-service-oriented organization and functional area. So, we need to be present. And how do we utilize the feedback and provide that feedback to our staff to say, “Hey, here’s where we’re making really good movements. Here’s where we can grow a little bit better and increase our performance or our efficiency.” It’s all about, how do you combine the data with the people that you’re working with?

Because numbers can tell a story, but also, people tell stories. So, ask those questions. Where do you see the gap? Where do you see the lack of acknowledgement and recognition for the staff and what they’re doing, right? How can you re-energize them, incentivize them without making it feel like there’s this pressure cooker that they’re in?

[00:18:01] Gil: Yeah, I think a lot of that with the numbers versus humans element comes down to, a lot of times, it’s that difference between knowledge and wisdom, right? I remember, when I was a first-year admissions counselor, my responsibility was Southern New Jersey through the D.C. area, including all of Pennsylvania, but my school was in Connecticut. So, Western Pennsylvania was a little bit of a hike for me to go to try to recruit students versus the Philadelphia to, like, Harrisburg area, right? And so, not to say that Pittsburgh wouldn’t have been lovely. I would have loved to go to Pittsburgh. I was actually, I was looking for excuses to go to Pittsburgh.

This was back in the day, they would give me the printout of last year’s reports where it would show me the conversions of applicants to admits and admits to enrolls from every school in my territory. So, of course, I flipped through to get to the Pittsburgh schools. And in the Pittsburgh schools, there was one school where we had one inquiry, applied, was admitted, and enrolled. And so, there was a nice little 100% conversion there at the far end. And I said, well, I mean, shoot, this school, every kid that applies comes, I should go. And so, as I have it in my plan, my supervisor came to me and she reminded me that our university has a conservatory-based music program and art school, and that student was a student who went to a National Portfolio Review Day and applied and was admitted. So, the admissions office, quite literally, had nothing to do with recruiting and getting that student to enroll. It was because they were coming for a specific program.

And so, for me to drive all the way to Pittsburgh to visit this high school because we caught lightning in a bottle last year probably didn’t make much sense and probably wasn’t a good use of school resources for me to be able to do that. But left to my own devices, I would have done that and it would have cost us a lot of money to not generate the same result.

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[00:20:27] Gil: And so, I’d love your thought with that in mind, of some times or opportunities where you’ve worked with people on your team or at, you know, higher ed’s a small community, so, at other institutions, where we leverage wisdom over the data, right? And I used to call that just like gut decision-making, right? And there’s a bad side to gut decision-making where you lean on the, “well, we’ve always done it that way,” or, “it feels good,” even though the data says to do something else, but there’s nuance, right? I’d love a little bit more on your thoughts on the nuance of human element versus data-driven decision-making, and maybe it’s data-informed decision-making versus data-driven.

[00:21:08] Anthony: Right. With that, I think that there’s a lot that’s going on, especially, as it relates to FAFSA and with regards to first-gen families and being able to complete that. There’s been so much frustration and anger regarding the FAFSA and, how do we complete this? And so, looking at who are the most implicated, right?

So, within my role of multicultural recruitment and outreach, there was some hiccups that happen for those families who have parents that are undocumented. And so, they were waiting days or weeks to get their information to be able to provide to FAFSA to assist their student. And so, a lot of it is, there may not necessarily be conversations around the benefits of having FAFSA nights, or there may be some conflicts of, well, we don’t have the capacity, right? So, looking at conversations about cross training, looking at conversations about, provide us with a document that is “frequently asked questions” or assisting and collaborating with financial aid to say, “Hey, here are some of the frequently asked questions that we’re getting from these families. How can we assist you all?” Because we know that their capacity was limited this year, especially because of how quickly they’re trying to process and package students and how fast that they’re trying to get everything together and reevaluating the SAI scores that weren’t exactly clean the way that the federal government had made it with FAFSA.

So, it’s all about knowing what you’re looking for, right? Knowing the population that you’re working with, understanding the community impacts, but also understanding the cultural impacts. I was thinking about this as I was reading through with regards to, you know, anti-affirmative action a couple of years ago and with the state of Michigan going towards, colleges, community college being free for students, as a movement and conversation. You have to understand the cultural impacts of these families that are influenced by their first-gen status or the lack of social capital. And so, sitting down and doing focus groups, not just with your current students, but with your most recent first-year class, then taking those anecdotes and developing a strategy, right?

Because, oftentimes, data can tell us one story, like I said, but when you talk to the people who are living that life and get their side and tie that in with the data, sure, you have to be aware of confirmation bias, but at the same time, you’re getting anecdotal experiences that you can refer to, to help drive that story in a way that can help influence the direction that you pursue. A lot of that is key to the work that I do within multicultural recruitment and outreach because we have specific things like an event on a Saturday for our migrant families. Well, migrant farm working season typically happens on Saturdays, but do we know from what month to what month? And how can we utilize that to our benefit?

If we know that, specifically within the Hispanic community, my family was Catholic. And so, we went to church on Sundays, but church was at 8:00 a.m. Does that mean that we can do something in the afternoons with those families, right? And so, working with partners, both in the communities, but also on campus that have had those conversations with these families, to influence the way that we talk to these families about events, rather than making assumptions of, because they’re culturally stereotypical this, then we have to plan this. But rather, let’s ask those questions, because we know that families that have first-gen American students that are also first-gen college students, they want the best for their child. That’s the whole reason of the American dream.

And I’m only referring to Hispanic and Latinx because that’s my personal experience. We want our students and we want our children to have a successful career. How can we make that happen? And those families are willing to do whatever it takes if they can see the value in that. But it’s about building relationships with the students and with the parents.

So, I hope that, kind of, answers the way of the wisdom and data influenced and personal connections.

[00:25:18] Gil: Yeah, and I think the most important piece that you alluded to there that I’ll try to reinforce for everyone is that there always seems to be something that makes it so that you can’t just rely on the data because there’s always an outlier. There’s always a new thing. There’s always a challenge, right? This year, it was the FAFSA fiasco. A couple years ago, it was COVID, right? There was the Supreme Court ruling. There were political cycles. There’s always something that seems to impact what we would normally want to just look at our year-over-year numbers or our trailing two years or three years, but there’s always a blip. There’s always something, right?

And so, you’ve got to use a little bit of intuition. And this is why the work of admissions officers is so important, is, if we rely just on people with no data, we probably make some pretty uninformed decisions, but if we relied on just data and didn’t let anybody have any flexibility, then we probably miss a lot of opportunities.

And I think that goes back to the point you mentioned earlier about your superhero origin story around that feeling of belonging. No student ever sat on campus and said, “This campus is great because the spreadsheet in my phone told me that it checks all these boxes,” right? They walk on the campus and they get the feel of the community. They get the feel of the people they interact with. And there’s a lot to be said, and I’ve had multiple folks on the podcast over the past few months on this topic, around better matching between students and schools, right? And if we rely on a data-driven enrollment process just use name-buying predictive models to say, “These are the students who we’re going to recruit,” then why travel? Then why go talk to students in person? Why have open houses? Because the list would be perfect, right? We know the list isn’t perfect because we buy 100,000 names to get 35 enrollments out of it, right? Like, there are different processes that we use to get in front of and engage the right students.

We use that data to guide us. We say, “Okay, we have a lot of interests in this area. Why don’t we send someone there? Why don’t we do some digital marketing in this area? Why don’t we do a dedicated program for guidance counselors,” right? These are all things that work together in tandem, including human experience, right? And so, I think you’ve got a lot of great insights there to share and a lot of great experience.

So, Anthony, I want to be respectful of your time but I want to thank you for being here and sharing your insights and your perspectives. One last request for folks that want to get in touch with you and stay in touch with you, start or continue this conversation, what are the best ways for people to do that?

[00:27:50] Anthony: Yeah. So, you can find me on LinkedIn, which is probably the easiest way. I’m pretty active there. It’s just Anthony Perez, P-E-R-E-Z. And then I also have a Twitter account, called Anthony’s Admissions Advice. It was a passion project that I am going to be starting to try to just upload some different tips, tricks. And there’s a TikTok project that I want to work on with that as well in tandem. But that. And then you can also email me at anthony, period, “s,” as in “Sean,” period, Perez, P-E-R-E-Z, @wmich.edu.

[00:28:26] Gil: Awesome. Anthony, we will put the links to your Twitter and your LinkedIn in the episode notes for our listeners so that very easy access to get connected. So, thank you so much again. I appreciate it. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. And we will see you next time on FYI. Bye-bye!

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