Director of Undergraduate Admissions

Summary

In support of the university’s mission and objectives, the Director of Undergraduate Admissions leads the undergraduate recruitment team, developing strategies to recruit and enroll traditional undergraduate students. The successful candidate will be responsible for overseeing the entire undergraduate admissions process, from outreach and recruitment to application review and yield activities.

Strategic Leadership

• Leads, mentors, and manages a team of admissions staff, providing guidance, support, and professional development opportunities to ensure high performance and alignment with departmental objectives.
• Develops and executes recruitment plans to attract a diverse pool of qualified applicants, including high school students, transfer students, international students, and non-traditional learners.
• Guides the team toward specific areas of focus for each week and part of the recruitment cycle.
• Ensures that standards for responsiveness and professionalism of written and verbal communication are consistently met by Admissions Counselors.
• Ensures Admissions Counselors represent the university professionally during all campus visit events and recruitment travel, and optimizes engagement with prospective students and their families, schools, and church staffs.
• Meets regularly with leadership to brainstorm, collaborate, and seek guidance and input on practices and strategies.
• Ensures compliance with relevant laws, regulations, and accreditation standards governing admissions practices, and prepares reports and documentation as required.
  
  

Marketing & Outreach

• Represents PBA to prospective students and their families and adeptly communicates the value proposition and reasons a family can confidently select PBA.
• Collaborates with the Director of Enrollment Marketing to develop effective promotional materials and communication strategies. Provides input, content, and engagement on social media and digital platforms as needed. Ensures that engagement with prospective students is advantageous.
• Collaborates with the Campus Visits team to plan for campus visit events. Arranges recruitment team to optimize interactions while staffing events. Regularly meets with Campus Visits, seeking to understand nature of visits to the office, types of incoming calls being received, and gain feedback from staff on daily visits. Works to optimize prospective student visits to campus.
• Generates content for one-off and recruitment campaign messaging to students across the recruitment funnel.
• Establishes and maintains relationships with high schools, community colleges, educational organizations, and other stakeholders to promote the university and facilitate recruitment efforts.
• Seeks out opportunities to grow the university and penetrate new/underserved markets domestically and internationally while ensuring that strong feeder markets have excellent recruitment coverage such that they continue to yield PBA students.
  
  

Yield Activities

• Develops and implements comprehensive admissions strategies aligned with the university's enrollment goals, leveraging market research and data analysis to identify target student populations and recruitment opportunities.
• Contributes to the annual scholarship strategy. In conjunction with Financial Aid staff, educates Admissions Counselors on communication regarding financial aid offers to prospective student families such that each Admissions Counselor can clearly communicate every aspect of the offer and the process of completing the financial aid file with families. Counsels with families as needed, handles escalations in conjunction with Financial Aid staff, and recommends students for available funds.
• Collaborates with academic departments, student services, financial aid, and other university stakeholders to ensure a coordinated and seamless admissions experience for applicants.
• Sets target deadlines for admitted students and monitors their progress. Responds as needed to ensure progression.
• Trains Admissions Counselors to assist new students in completing the Enrollment Checklist.
• Other duties as assigned.
  
  

Technology & Data Management

• Utilizes data analytics tools and techniques to track and analyze admissions trends, monitor progress towards enrollment goals, and make data-driven recommendations for recruitment strategies and resource allocation.
• Queries the CRM to build reports tracking progress. Leverages reports to meet enrollment objectives. Uses these reports when guiding the team’s focuses, determining territory assignments, and deciding the needed areas for domestic and international travel.
• Ensures that Admissions Counselors are utilizing the CRM as directed to record interactions, create new records, tag students, map travel plans, etc.
• Trains Admissions Counselors to use available technology tools to support and maximize recruitment travel and engagements.
• Analyzes and tracks progress of Admissions Counselors against daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals. Mines data and meets regularly with individual team members to assist them in improving their success rates and performance metrics (e.g. completed calls, connections with students and families, call volume, etc).
• Communicates regularly with leadership on the use of technology tools and presents use cases for needed functionality.
  
  

Recruitment Travel & Territories

• Oversees recruitment travel planning and ensures that opportunities to represent PBA and connect with prospective students, virtually and in-person, are maximized.
• Assigns and realigns recruitment territories to staff, as needed, to meet goals.
• Travels, on behalf of the University, to recruit students, as assigned.
• Trains Admissions Counselors on how to efficiently and effectively book accommodations, schedule and hold school visits, meet with students on travel, and report on and record their activities and interactions in the CRM.
• Represents the university and for professional development opportunities.
  
  

Application Review & Selection

• Oversees the application review process, ensuring timely and thorough evaluation of applicant credentials, adherence to admissions criteria, and compliance with institutional policies and procedures.
• Collaborates with academic departments to align admission criteria with program requirements.
• Reviews applications for admission and makes admissions decisions to admit, waitlist, or deny students admission to the university.
• Manages application review bins and assigns reviewers, as needed, to ensure that admissions decisions are made within 72 hours of completed application.
  
  

Qualifications

EDUCATION:

Bachelor's degree in higher education administration, business, counseling, or a related field required; Master's degree preferred, or equivalent experience.

EXPERIENCE:

3 years of progressive experience in undergraduate admissions, with a track record of leadership and success. Knowledge of legal and regulatory issues affecting admissions, including FERPA, Title IX, and ADA compliance.

ESSENTIAL COMPETENCIES (Knowledge, Skills, And Abilities)

• Customer Service Orientation – Keeps internal and/or external key stakeholder(s), students, parents, faculty, staff and community partners in mind at all times.
• Professionalism – Displays a high level of professionalism, e.g. timeliness, reliability, communication, and work ethic.
• Christ-first Faith – Provides spiritual support to community members, including students, on their Christian faith journey.
• Analytical Thinking & Decision Making – Identifies and understands trends and/or issues, connects data points through analysis and logical conclusions/actionable strategies.
• Attention to Detail –Ability to efficiently and accurately focus on a specific task or number of tasks. Reviews details with a critical eye.
• Change Management – Ability to drive and implement change both internally and externally.
• Confidentiality – Maintains the necessary confidentiality and discretion required for the position.
• Continuous Improvement – Implement or brainstorm ways to optimize a process.
• Develops Others – Ability to promote continuous improvementwithin teams and/or individuals.
• Effective Communication – Expresses ideas and information in a clear and concise manner both verbally and in writing to convey clear, well-articulated messaging across a wide variety of audiences.
• Establishes Trust – Gains the confidence of others by actions and words that promote being honest, forthcoming, and vulnerable.
• Leadership/Influence –Ability to motivate, coach and develop others, as well as influence a group of people to achieve common goals, and implement university strategies. Strong supervisory skills.
• Project and Time Management – Effective planning and priority setting. Ability to manage several complex projects simultaneously while working under pressure to meet deadlines.
• Results Orientation & Accountability – Takes accountability and identifies, executes and drives actions to consistently achieve desired results.
• Strategic Mindset – Ability to step out of the everyday details, view the situation from above and provide an objective perspective
• Teamwork & Collaboration – Creates a climate that fosters commitment to a common vision and shared values that promote cooperation and working together through trust and support of others both departmentally and cross-functionally.
  
  

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Ability to travel 10% of the time.
• Ability to work non-routine hours during certain times of the year.
• Ability to sit for prolonged periods of time.
• Ability to traverse campus and stairs.