Last week, we launched our impact series with a post about one of our higher education customers that used the Othot Platform to determine how best to convert accepted students into deposited students. The answer was admitted student visits. While this is a common theme across many of our customers, there is another use case that seems to be the most important across all of our customers: financial aid spend.
Our customers are using Othot’s predictive and prescriptive modeling to directly impact their financial aid awards. Whether they are using the platform for strategy development, initial financial aid offers, or even managing the appeals process, our customers are gaining value from the insights and analyses to inform and optimize their approaches to financial aid. The following is an example of how an institution used Othot’s platform to increase enrollment using financial aid awards.
Surface Insights
One of our customers had been using Othot’s Platform, specifically the "Sensitivity" feature, to award financial aid. The higher education institution wanted to test if it could incentivize a narrow population of prospective students. Othot’s predictive modeling initially showed that this group of 50 students were very unlikely to enroll. However, with Othot’s prescriptive modeling, the institution was able to analyze if an additional $10,000 aid award would increase the likelihood to enroll among the group.
Change Behavior
The results from the prescriptive analysis showed the school could expect about six students if it offered the $10,000 award. Based on current enrollment projections and expected financial aid spend, the institution had the flexibility to act on the results from the analysis and offered additional aid to the test population.
Deliver Outcomes
After May 1st we analyzed the converted deposit students from that group and found that exactly six of them had enrolled. Six students were meaningful in multiple ways. Not only did it provide validation for the prescriptive modeling results, more importantly, the additional revenue provided to the institution for six more students was upwards of $250,000 per year.
Continuously Improve
The customer achieved value from the Othot platform using insights and analysis for financial aid and campus engagements. The key focus moving forward for the school is to use Othot’s platform throughout its entire recruitment cycle. Othot is working with the institution to expand utilization across the entire recruitment team and to integrate the platform with the school’s CRM to streamline user workflow and leverage efficiencies across multiple applications.
Continue to stay tuned next week for another impact series post. As always, if you would like to learn more or start gaining value for yourself and your institution, please reach out to me at zjvarga@othot.com.
