| HESA

Introducing the Early Influences Project

In this period of demographic decline, postsecondary institutions’ recruitment campaigns cannot afford to miss a single student. These campaigns are mainly designed to target students in the last year of high school. Yet results from our Student Decisions Project indicated that while Grade 12 is when formal decision-making takes place, most students already have a “choice set” of institutions by the start of the school year and many have already settled on a first choice school.

Because of this, institutions will need to design marketing tactics that focus on students prior to the final year of secondary. But how? What makes grade 11 students tick? How are they forming their post-secondary preferences? What can institutions do to end up on the radar for PSE-bound students at this early stage?

This study, the first in Canada to ever look at the institutional preferences of students below the final year of secondary, will use 300 in-depth qualitative interviews with a sample of Grade 11 students from across English-speaking Canada. The interviews will address key areas where there is a lack of understanding about younger students’ impressions of universities and colleges: what are the sources of influence on them during this period, and what kinds of information are they seeking out (if at all)? From where do students hear about PSE, and when do these messages come across? Are they already considering factors such as costs, financial support, and eligibility requirements?

The results of this study will give participating institutions a competitive advantage by providing intelligence on how to reach students at an earlier phase of their secondary education, and how to inform and shape their ideas about which future PSE path is right for them. Institutions will be able to generate greater awareness and more potential leads than ever before.

Becoming a sponsoring member of the study will give you access to:

Input into the questions asked in the interviews, to increase their relevance to your institution;
A detailed report in February of 2017 that provides a nuanced picture of Grade 11 students’ awareness of the PSE landscape, and how they develop it.