ACT Information Manager Drives Effective College Recruitment and Retention

“On many campuses, people didn’t have any way to translate the data in the electronic record. Many of them told us they used little more than the test scores,” said ACT Senior Consultant Michael Hovland. “We were trying to teach them how to drive, and they didn’t have a car. So we decided to build them a car.” That car is the new ACT Information Manager, or AIM™, a database software tool designed to give colleges full access to all the data in the ACT Assessment electronic records. AIM organizes the information and presents it in a user-friendly format that is easy to manipulate.

“AIM is designed to let them use that data. It’s a user interface for the electronic file,” Hovland said.

Early reactions are enthusiastic.

“This is a really great tool and I will use it daily,” said Cathey Morrisson, assistant director of admissions-operations at the University of Mississippi.

AIM operates like a high-efficiency engine, driving recruitment and retention efforts. When students choose to send their scores to colleges and universities, officials at those designated campuses can use AIM to store, manipulate, and share all of the data from the ACT Assessment. With that information readily available, they can focus recruitment efforts on students with desired characteristics, get a better understanding of one student or any of a number of different groups of students, export data to another program or print it for further analysis, and share data electronically among academic, administrative, and student services offices.

Using AIM, admissions professionals get a valuable overview of students in their territories—their interests, needs, abilities, and enrollment preferences. Then they can zoom in to the individual student level to get the breadth of cognitive and noncognitive information they need to build relationships and personalize communications. The software helps colleges target their recruitment efforts, plan recruitment travel more efficiently, and most important, focus on more students who are good prospects for their school.

University officials could, for example, generate a list of all African American students who are interested in engineering, have a B or better high school grade point average, earned an ACT score of 25 or higher, and who attended a National Science Foundation Summer Institute.

“We expect this to be a tool for many purposes, including territory management and recruitment,” Hovland said. Among the 72 cognitive data items available are ACT scores and subscores, national and local norms, and prediction research data. But AIM gives campuses a more complete picture of the whole student. In addition to the academic information, there are 197 student profile items including demographic information, factors influencing college choice, educational plans, out-of-class accomplishments, and high school course and grade information.

AIM is priced to make campuswide use of the information affordable. An unlimited license for a campus costs $600; renewals are $400 per year.

“The goal is for schools to use the data,” Hovland said. “We hope it is used all over the campus.”

AIM runs on Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, or XP platforms. Data files may be shared over a network. To use AIM, campuses must receive electronic ACT Assessment records. Password protection capabilities have been built into the software. Customer support is offered through webcasts and user conferences.

AIM is a major initiative of ACT’s Enrollment Management Task Force, which Hovland chairs.

For more information about AIM, contact Larry Erenberger (319/337-1726) or Michael Hovland (319/341-2295) or go to www.act.org/aim, where you also can register for a webcast demonstration of the software.