Freshmen Enrollment for Division 1 Universities

Dr. Ryan Phelps Eco 339.004

Fall 2015
Brock Estep, Chris Johnson, Cody Scott, Mat Vela
December 1, 2015

Executive Summary

With colleges spending thousands of dollars on advertising annually, it would be nice to

know exactly what a student is looking for when deciding where to attend. With personal
preference and family ties being a big part of the choice, its hard to accurately evaluate what
factors influence freshman enrollment. With that in mind, we still decided to test the significance
of 5 different factors. These factors included cost of tuition, average accepted SAT score, the
number of degree plans, and the colleges athletic expense.
We decided to collect data from all of the D1 universities in the nation, excluding
master's colleges and military universities. Since we collected data from all 325 D1 universities,
our data is evaluating a population instead of a sample. Because of this we ensured our data is
unbiased and efficient. Once we ran our descriptive statistics, correlation matrix, and our
multiple regression tables we were able to effectively evaluate our data. We got an adjusted R
squared of .65 with two of the variables not being statistically significant. Interestingly the city
population and SAT scores arent significantly correlated to freshman enrollment. This is
probably because the data doesnt account for universities right on the outside of major cities.
Students with low SAT scores also are probably not going to apply to more prestigious schools,
just like kids with high SAT scores arent going to go to a school with lower standards.
The data from the cost of tuition, degree plans, and athletic budget are very effective at
predicting freshman enrollment and can be used to predict the number of incoming freshman
based on those variables. The model can also be used to see how many students the college is
expected to gain or lose by increasing or decreasing any of the three significant variables.

Introduction

In todays society college is becoming more of a necessity than a luxury. This means
more and more people are choosing to attend college. With this increase in demand for higher
education the question arises what factors influence a person's decision to attend a specific
college. This information would benefit all types of universities so they would know how to
effectively advertise to different students. It is impossible to measure personal preference, or how
much value an individual puts on different factors. With that in mind, we expected a high
standard error in our model. This is an interesting question, because it determines how
effectively a college can manipulate enrollment based on advertising methods, and different
things done at the university. The independent variables we chose for our model include cost of
tuition, the average accepted SAT score, the number of degree plans offered, the athletic expense,
and the population of the city the university is in. The two that we predicted to have the most
influence on freshman enrollment were cost of tuition and the athletic budget. Both of these
along with degree plans helped effectively explain our model.

Data Description
The website we used to find our dependent variable and most of our independent variable
information was StartClass.com. This website gave essential information for the success of our
empirical project. StartClass provided the freshman enrollment, cost of tuition, number of degree
plans, and the average SAT score of acceptors. The second website we used was created by the
U.S. Department of Education for researching college athletic budgets. This database allowed us
to find the total athletic expense of the researched college. Finally to find the towns population
where the college is located, we used Google's census data to determine the populations.
As college students, we thought back to when we were first started applying to college.
Our team thought up of reasons we applied to our own school and brainstormed from there. We

chose freshman enrollment as our dependent variable because we were curious on why students
went to particular schools. Our team thought cost of tuition was an important independent
variable because in most cases price is an important factor of an education and determining if
one could afford it or not. This also is similar with SAT scores. The average SAT score of a
student who is accepted into a college is important because it can be a big determining factor on
whether someone applying is accepted or not. The number of degree plans is important to
someone applying for college because for some applying, they have a general idea on what kind
of degree they are going for. If a college doesnt have this degree or is more of a specified
college, a student may not apply. Athletic expense is an independent variable that may only apply
to certain students or appliers. If someone likes college sports and that is something important to
them, they may apply to one school over another because of the success from the schools
athletic program. Finally, the last independent variable is the college town population. Some
individuals applying may have a preference on whether their school is in a large or small college
town due to their past experience or preferences.

Correlation Matrix Results

The Correlation Matrix table shows to what degree each variable relates to the dependent
variable of freshmen enrollment. On the table, we can see that there are negative variable
correlation for the cost of tuition and city size which is to be expected when determining
enrollment. This means, while SAT scores, degree plans, and athletic budget positivity correlates
with freshman enrollment, tuition costs and city size seems to have little to do with freshmen
enrollment. This interpretation matched our original intuitions and helped support our assertion
as to which of our variables would influence enrollment.

Regression Results
The interpretation of Adjusted R Squared is: 64.6% of the variation of freshman
enrollment can be explained by the model. The interpretation of the statistical significance is that
I am 99% confident that cost of tuition, degree plans, and athletic expense are determinants of
the dependent variable as modeled. The statistically significant variables at the 1% level of
significance are: Cost of Tuition: 0.00, Degree Plans: 0.00, and Athletic Expense: 0.00. The
interpretation of all significant coefficients is as follows: On average and holding all else
constant, for each additional dollar increase in tuition the freshman enrollment decreases by
0.0417 students. On average and holding all else constant, for each additional degree plan the

college adds, the freshman enrollment will increase by 15.09 students. On average and holding
all else constant, for each additional dollar spent on the athletic program, freshman enrollment
will increase by 0.000021 students.
The interpretations matched up with most of our intuitions when put into perspective. For
example, most colleges do not just increase their athletic budget by a dollar and expect huge
results. According to our model, if a college increases the budget by approximately $50,000, they
would expect one additional student to be enrolled. It makes sense that there was an increase in
freshman enrollment with additional degree plans, but one would think for only a 15 person
increase if the addition was actually worth it. It also makes sense that the more expensive a
college is the less the freshman enrollment would be, since everyone has a different college
budget. City size is irrelevant in both significance and theory. City size had a p-value of .5777
making it insignificant. City Size is insignificant in theory because a lot of people can commute
if the college is somewhat nearby, and many of the colleges we found are outside a big city or a
city was not too far away for a student to go home and visit on the weekends. Because choosing
a college is subjective towards the individual college, some factors we could have included was
how many expected legacies are coming, how far away you live from the college, out-of-state
tuition, how much is room and board, the total enrollment or the size of the actual university.
Instead of using a sample, we used the population of all D1 colleges. Some D1 colleges were left
out by relevance, such as, some D1 colleges only have Master programs, and because we needed
to observe freshman enrollment, someone getting their Masters degree was irrelevant. We could
create a new population being all colleges, and then D1 colleges would be our sample size.

Hypothesis Test
1) The increase of degree plans would be less than 16 students for every degree plan added to the
program.
Authority to Proceed: The 6 Assumptions
Ho: B3 16
H1: B3 16
t-crit: 1.960
DR: Reject Ho if t-test is 1.960
t-test = bj-j/sbj = 15.0904 - 16/ 1.4853 = -.61240
Decision: Reject Ho
Conclusion: We are 95%

2) The increase of degree plans would be greater than 16 students for every degree plan added to
the program.
Authority to Proceed: The 6 Assumptions
Ho: B1 16
H1: B1 16
t-crit: 1.960
DR: Reject Ho if t-test is 1.960
t-test = bj-j/sbj = 15.0904 - 16/ 1.4853 = -.61240
Decision: Reject Ho
Conclusion: We are 95%
3) Authority to Proceed: The 6 Assumptions
Ho: 1=2=3=4=5 = 0
H1: Any slope coefficient 0

Prediction
The model our group has made, would predict the cumulative change in freshmen
enrollment if any of the variables were changed. Meaning, a university like Stephen F Austin,
could change a given variable and accurately predict the change in freshmen enrollment on

average holding all else in the model constant. For example, if Stephen F Austin changed their
degree plan by adding 10 plans, the model could accurately reflect that freshmen enrollment
would change to 2531 up from 2253 and if the athletic budget was to increase by 6 million, we
could accurately predict freshmen enrollment would increase to 2580 up from 2253. The
accuracy of the model to predict freshmen enrollment displays an impressive level of accuracy
when Stephen F Austins information is used in our model. The model predicts, holding all
information constant, that Stephen F Austins freshmen enrollment would be 2380 where its
actual enrollment was 2253; a difference of only 127. This model, if improved with the new
found knowledge from this research, could be used when evaluating changes to university policy,
budget, and future planning. This model could very well be used as a measure of efficiency for
the universities decisions. If a university decided to increase degree plan, athletic budget, or cost
of tuition and fails to see any improvement to freshmen enrollment, as depicted in the model, it
would be apparent that their plans are inefficient compared to other universities holding all else
constant.
To further explain this, we will input additional data into our model equation. But because our
team decided to research every university in the Division 1 group, we must choose another
Division and another. Arbitrarily, we will choose Division 2 and another years information to
test our model. St Marys University in San Antonio Texas is a Division 2 university with an
expensive $26186 cost of tuition, an average accepted SAT score of 1550, 60 degree plans, and a
$5,374,093 athletics budget shows 596 entering freshmen that year. Our model, holding
everything constant reflects 926 expected entering freshmen. The difference would probably be
due to the abnormal tuition cost. Using Stephen F Austins data again but using year 2014
showed they had $9312, an average SAT acceptance score of 1310, 90 degree plans, and a

$15,898,145 athletics budget, our model predicted 2197 freshman enrollment where the actual
enrollment was 2371. A mere 174 difference between projected and actual helps to defend our
models prediction capabilities.

Conclusion
After reviewing the findings and predictions from the model, it is clear that most of the
independent variables (excluding city size) listed help explain the variation in freshman
enrollment. Although SAT scores are not statistically significant, keeping it in the model still
helps raise the adjusted R squared. This is because the p-value is only .1203. The other 3
variables (Cost of tuition, average SAT scores, and Athletic budget) have a 1% significance level
and are strongly correlated with freshman enrollment. Other information that would have been
interesting to find and that could possibly be researched in the future, is taking a survey to see
how many students are attending SFA because they are a legacy or are from the Nacogdoches
area. This way we could see the percentage of people that chose SFA do to personal preferences
or convenience. This would show the proportion of students that attend SFA regardless of the
advertising or other independent variables expressed in the model. Gathering information from
previous years would also be interesting to see how specific changes made by colleges affected
enrollment.

References
StartClass. (2015). Retrieved November 30, 2015, from http://www.startclass.com

The Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool. (2015). Retrieved November 30, 2015, from
http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/Index.aspx