Referral Source Definitions

Graduate Admissions

Updated 4/1/11

Scope: Tracking students has grown increasingly difficult with varied

source codes and a wealth of responses to “How did you hear

about us.” This document herein attempts to clarify a means to

appropriately track referring sources for student prospects.

Tracking

Field

Definitions:

Tracking of students occurs in one of three ways:

• Created Source Code ID

This ID is created automatically if a student enters the

system via an inquiry page or an automatic import. This ID

can also be generated manually by users who input new

records based on the source of the inquiry. This is a

required field during manual entry.

• How Did You Hear of Us

This field is populated by a student answer to the question

on an interest page or an application. If provided to a UNH

user entering new prospects, this information can be

entered manually; however, it should never be assumed if

not clear from the prospect and should thus be left empty.

This field includes specific referral sources such as

GradSchools.com, Facebook, Newspaper Ad,

Friend/Family/Alumni, and others. It can be expanded with

specific source names if requested.

• Referral Source

This field is populated by a series of bulk edits in the

system that compiles data from both the Created Source

Code ID and How Did You Hear of Us attributes. This

attribute serves as a means of categorizing student data.

This field includes sources such as Internet, Social

Networks, Print or Web-Based Guides, Word of Mouth, and

more.

Tracking

Issues:

Prior to the establishment of the new “Referral Source” attribute,

determining the source of a student record for ROI strategy was

extremely difficult as users would have to use both “Created

Source Code ID” and “How Did You Hear of Us” fields for reporting

purposes. The added “Referral Source” attribute allows us to make

strategic decisions on how to more appropriately track students.

New Tracking

Process:

Students and users will continue to use the “Created Source Code

ID” field and populate the “How Did You Hear of Us” fields when

student answers are provided. The new process involves two key

cornerstone initiatives:

• The “How Did You Hear of Us” attribute will become a

central repository for all referral source codes. Student-

provided answers combined with created source code ID

values will give us a comprehensive list of detailed source

codes. These source codes can be as detailed as a specific

newspaper title, website, or directory name.

• The “Referral Source” attribute will serve as a means to

categorize all of our sources for reporting purposes. For

example, GradSchools.com, GraduateGuide.com, and

Petersons.com will all be listed as “Print or Web-Based

Directory.”

How this is all

accomplished:

Through a series of bulk edits set up in the system, the system will

look every morning for students with specific values in both the

“How Did You Hear of Us” and “Created Source Code ID” attributes

and perform the appropriate edits to each student record. The

“Created Source Code ID” will never change; the “How Did You

Hear of Us” attribute will change only if the question is empty.

Please refer to the source diagrams on the attached addendum

for details on how sources will be reflected in the “Referral

Source” attribute.

What this

means to you:

You can now run a detailed report of all sources for a given

student pool (How Did You Hear of Us attribute) or report on

students using a condensed list of referral source categories

(Referral Source attribute). The goal of this initiative is to provide

you with useful data to make informed strategic decisions on how

to best allocate resources to build our prospect pool.

Addendum: Referral Source Input Maps

I. Print or Web-Based Directories

Print or Web-Based Directories

Peterson's Guide

Petersons.com

Graduate School Guide

GraduateGuide.

com

GradSchools.com

Gradview.comHotCoursesAbro

ad.com

Study in the USA

College.us.com

International Hobsons Leads

Guidebook/Magazine

II. Word of Mouth

III. Purchased Lists

Word of

Mouth

Employer

Education Consultant

Guidance Counselor

Coach

Educational Agent

Friend/Relative/Alum

Faculty Referral

Purchased Lists

GMAT Search Names

GRE Search Names

International Search Names

International Hobsons

Leads

IV. Fair/Expo/Tour

V. Social Networks

Fair/Expo/Tour

Corporate/Employer Visit

College Fair

Education Fair

Social Networks

Facebook

EMT Facebook

AppOrkut

Twitter

VI. Internet

VII. Other

*Note: Television is included because we do not regularly utilize

television advertising. When we begin to use it again, we can create a

separate category. The Newspaper/Radio/TV Ad category is old and

does not provided specific data to categorize it specifically with

newspaper, radio, or TV. All new prospects are sourced more

specifically based on how they learned about us.

Internet

UNH Website

Other Website

Google

Other

Newspaper/Radio/TV Ad

Television

Other