Whatever the term, the Office of Admissions is changing the way it recruits students to UB, taking a more proactive approach that is being aided, in large part, by a new "telecounseling" strategy and two software packages purchased from an enrollment-management consulting firm.

The hard data is not in yet; the strategies only have been in place for about six months, with efforts targeted mainly toward the freshman class entering in Fall 1999.

But anecdotal evidence suggests that the increased yield seen so far for freshmen entering UB in Fall 1998 can be attributed, in part, to the new efforts, specifically telecounseling, says Toomey, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education and director of admissions.

Nicolas Goodman, vice provost for undergraduate education who oversees the Office of Admissions, agreed that the new strategies are partly responsible for the increased freshman yield.

"I think we have made significant progress in moving our admissions effort into the modern age," he said. "We now have a research-based, databased admissions effort that is making use of contemporary technology and is comparable to that of our peer institutions."

In an interview with the Reporter last week, Toomey and Weatherston, assistant director of admissions and marketing communications manager, outlined the new strategies being implemented by the admissions office, some of which came from work with the consulting firm of Noel-Levitz.

The most visible new strategy is "telecounseling," which Toomey described as "those annoying telephone calls you get during dinner." Telecounseling, which began in earnest in January, is aimed at "building relationships with prospective students over the telephone," said Andy Morris, director of the telecounseling center, which opened a new office last week on the second floor of Fillmore Quad in the Ellicott Complex. It "helps to put a human face, or voice, on the institution," Morris said, noting that the 30-member telecounseling staff represents a wide variety of student leaders at UB.

Telephone contacts are made after a prospective student's initial request for information, to thank him or her for applying, for sending in the deposit and to follow up on the prospect's attendance at special UB events, he said.

"It allows current students to allay fears, correct any misconceptions or misperceptions of attending a major university," he said. "It allows for a bonding-type interaction to occur when prospective students get an opportunity to talk with someone in the same major, or from the same region of the state, or in a special program."

Noting that high-school students are deluged by information from colleges and universities, often "a well-timed phone call" will mean a great deal, Toomey said. "UB is tagged as a big, impersonal place," she said, adding that students frequently think it's "a big deal" that UB personally has called them.

The key to the long-term success of telecounseling will be to integrate it with the Enrollment Management Action System (EMAS), a database software system purchased from Noel-Levitz, Toomey and Weatherston said.

EMAS allows the admissions office to "direct integrated communication to the customer," said Toomey. It records all UB contacts to prospective students, as well as queries coming in to UB from students, in a database. This enables admissions staff to "design a customized communication plan" for potential students, she added.

Laurie Bragg, system administrator for EMAS, said the software enables the admissions staff to "break up the main population (of prospective students) into sub-populations so we can target them with specific types of communication."

Admissions is attempting to communicate different messages to different markets, Weatherston added, explaining that different promotional pieces would be mailed to metro New York students vs. upstate students.

"We're trying to customize the message to the audience," she said.

To further refine its efforts, admissions has begun using the Forecast Plus software package, which develops a model of the type of student UB historically has attracted, based on demographic information. It applies that model to new contacts and identifies those contacts who, according to the model, would be more likely to attend UB. Weatherston said it allows UB to concentrate its efforts on those students most likely to attend the university.

Toomey confided that she initially was skeptical of whether the Forecast Plus model would work. But that skepticism vanished after the level of interest of students who were contacted by telephone was compared with the student's model score developed by Forecast Plus.

Weatherston noted that UB's philosophy in the past has been "We're a great place; why doesn't everybody know it? "We can't assume people know," she said. "We have to reach outŠThe only way to do this is to have this kind of software support to keep track of everything you do."