The Whole Household Is Your Real Enrollment Audience
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Jim Eaton spends part of his mornings watching who walks through the front door at Hudson Valley Community College. He's noticed a pattern. "If they're under 22, they're bringing mom and dad with them," says Eaton, Director of Admissions and Recruitment at the college. "That tells me the parents want to be engaged."
It's a small observation with a large implication. It's easy to center the student in that thinking. They're the one who ultimately walks through the door. But Eaton's point is broader than that: a student's decision gets shaped by the people around them, and parents are one of the biggest influences in that circle. Eaton spent nearly a decade in admissions at Siena University before coming to Hudson Valley, and he built his approach around that idea. Parents are part of the household an institution is already trying to reach.
The household itself is your core audience
Hudson Valley is adding a parent email field at the point of inquiry, and soon on the application itself. The logic is direct. "The messages we're sending out aren't going into a black hole," Eaton says. "They're intentionally going to a few different people in the same household, so it's more likely the message gets through."
That logic holds up. A 17 or 18 year old checks email on their own schedule. A parent, copied on the same update, often sees it first. Reaching a household costs the same as reaching one inbox. It changes who's likely to see the message that's already going out.
Eaton has watched the payoff play out in person. "I want our parents to walk away wowed by the hand-holding and the help we've provided throughout the process," he says, "in hopes that if it didn't work out for number one, maybe there's a number two or three on deck." A parent who felt informed and supported through one student's enrollment remembers that experience when a sibling starts the same process a few years later. That's awareness compounding on a timeline most quarterly reports never capture.
A wide net still needs to be the right net
Eaton's own household is proof of what a poorly targeted wide net looks like from the receiving end. His daughter gets three or four mailers a day, and some schools have sent a dozen pieces total to a student who's never once said she's interested. "Being strategic in how you communicate with people, when, and how often, is key," he says. "We all have budgets, we all have bottom lines, and utilizing that money in the most effective manner is something we should all be doing."
Eaton's alternative runs on relationships built over years. For most of his career, he's worked alongside the same group of high school counselors across the Albany, New York region, first representing Siena, now Hudson Valley. "I'm still lucky to be working with the same school counselors," he says. "I'm still wearing my green polo, but it says Hudson Valley Community College now instead of Siena." A counselor who trusts a specific admissions rep is a far more precise filter than a generic mailing list, and that trust took years to build.
Casting a wide net and finding the right audience are the same job. The net is the relationship network: parents, counselors, the people already positioned to pass a message along to the student who needs to hear it.
Meeting students where they are
The same thinking extends past the point of admission. Hudson Valley's most competitive programs, including nursing, radiology tech, and several trades, turn away a meaningful share of applicants every year purely on seat count. For those programs, Eaton's team opens applications as early as May 1 and runs them first come, first served, so a student knows exactly where they stand instead of waiting on a maybe. They've added an enrollment deposit for high-demand programs to get a clearer read on real intent, and they run virtual information nights so a family can learn about a program from home before committing to anything.
The seat count stays the same either way. What changes is how clearly a student understands where they stand and what else is open to them. "One of the biggest challenges I'm facing right now is trying to keep a student engaged, even if they didn't get into their first choice," Eaton says. "We've got a spot for everybody here because we're a community college. Our job is showing them the pathway to get where they actually want to go."
A wide enough net catches people who don't fit the first program they had in mind. Eaton's team treats that moment as an opening, not a dead end. A different program at the same school is still a real option, and a student who hears about it clearly is far more likely to take it than one who's left to assume the door closed.
The long game
Eaton keeps a poster from the Boston Marathon on his office wall. He brings it up unprompted when asked what long-term effort in his career has paid off. "Working in higher ed is like running a marathon," he says. "You're there for the reward at the end, helping people walk across that stage."
A marathon rarely goes exactly as planned. A runner adjusts pace, works around an unexpected wall, sometimes takes a different line to the same finish line. Eaton applies that same patience to students whose path shifts partway through, the ones who don't get into nursing or radiology tech but still want a credential that gets them somewhere real. The finish line is still the same stage and the same diploma, even when the route to it changes along the way.
Parent engagement and counselor relationships take years to build, and neither shows up in next quarter's application numbers. Eaton's version of casting a wide net is about reaching the right people, through the channels they already trust, long before they're ready to decide, and staying with them even after the plan they walked in with changes. Meeting a student where they are means telling them plainly what else is open to them. Options are opportunities, and the student who hears about them clearly is the one who takes them.
Jim Eaton is the Director of Admissions and Recruitment at Hudson Valley Community College. This conversation was part of OnDeck & OffScript, a series featuring candid conversations with leaders across higher education. Got something to share? Join the conversation.
