Meta Analysis of Enrollment and Engagement Outcomes
How our communities impacted the enrollment of our partners during the Fall 2025 admissions cycle
Key Findings
The following Key Findings reflect results from all MeetYourClass clients that used our Engage & Enroll solutions throughout the Fall 2025 admissions cycle. Rather than focusing solely on communities that excelled, this case study looks at results from a meta-analysis across all MeetYourClass partners. Data points are based on all information provided by our partners; while reporting parameters varied by institution, all available data was utilized without exclusion.
The Overarching Goal: Improving Enrollment
When comparing the Fall 2024 and Fall 2025 admissions cycles, our new partners saw the following average results relative to the prior cycle after partnering with MeetYourClass:
Overall Enrollment: 9.7% increase.
Yield: 16.6% increase.
Deposits: 8.5% increase (despite a 4.4% reduction in admits).
Summer Melt: 12.7% decrease.
Levers that Helped Improve Enrollment
New Connections: 51.4 new connections made (potential friends, roommates, people to carpool with, study buddies, etc.) per student with a complete profile.
Brand Amplification: On average, each Instagram community reached a unique audience 91x larger than the size of the partner’s incoming class.
Marketing ROI: Each Instagram community generated organic engagement equivalent to $13,606 in paid advertising spend.
Verbal Commitment Accuracy: Accurately predicted eventual enrollment outcomes 93.9% of the time.
Front-Running Deposits: 13.7% of our verbal commitment alerts preceded the student's official deposit or confirmation.
What Our University Partners Are Saying
While the metrics above quantify the impact of MeetYourClass on enrollment, the true value is best understood through the student experience itself. Behind every percentage point of growth is a student finding a potential roommate, study buddy, or best friend.
Our partners don't just see better numbers; they see a fundamental shift in how their incoming class connects. Here is how university leaders describe the difference MeetYourClass makes on their campuses:
Background
The New Enrollment Reality: The "Silent" Decision Phase
Higher education is facing a convergence of pressures: a looming demographic cliff, rising application volumes per student, and an increasingly competitive yield environment. For admissions teams, the hardest challenge is no longer just generating leads—it is securing commitments from students who have more options than ever before.
Many students now make their final enrollment decisions in a "silent phase"—late at night, on social media, and in peer-to-peer conversations that admissions teams cannot see or influence. Glossy marketing materials and traditional outreach (emails, texts, phone calls) are seeing diminishing returns as students prioritize authenticity and validation from their future classmates.
In our 2026 College Decision Playbook, we surveyed ~3,500 incoming students what drove their enrollment decisions. Ninety-two percent of respondents said that a strong sense of community was an important factor in their decision process—leading us to believe that belonging is one of the strongest levers for, and predictors of, enrollment.
If a student makes a friend, finds a roommate, or publicly declares their commitment on social media, they are psychologically cementing their decision to attend. Conversely, if they feel isolated during the critical months between admission and move-in, they remain at high risk for summer melt.
The MeetYourClass Approach
MeetYourClass bridges this gap by meeting students where they already are. We built a dedicated enrollment platform that still integrates with the social networks students already use daily (like Instagram). Students primarily use MeetYourClass to build their community and peer-network—using it to look for friends, roommates, study buddies, people to carpool to events with, etc. Beyond directly improving the students experience, this ecosystem additionally derives signals that indicate where a student is at in their enrollment decision process.
MeetYourClass fills the gap no admissions team can realistically fill:
Students help other students understand the campus experience,
Community exists from research → enrollment → orientation → move-in,
Students get answers and affirmation without needing to formally message the institution,
Institutions gain visibility into intent, concerns, and sentiment, even from students who never reply to official outreach, and
High-touch nurturing becomes scalable and organic.
This case study analyzes how shifting from passive engagement to active, community-led conversion impacted enrollment outcomes across our 16 new partners for the Fall 2025 admissions cycle.
Results
Across our 16 new partner institutions throughout the Fall 2025 admissions cycle, MeetYourClass drove measurable enrollment growth as a result of increased engagement, added marketing touchpoints, and operational improvements.
Universities that implemented MeetYourClass during the Fall 2025 admissions cycle saw a 9.7% year-over-year increase in enrollment. These gains were driven by analytics and community building concentrated in the later stages of the enrollment funnel, which improved key metrics—such as deposits and summer melt—to achieve the overall enrollment growth.
Yield Improvement
Institutions that implemented MeetYourClass during the Fall 2025 admissions cycle saw an average 8.5% increase in deposits relative to the previous admissions cycle, despite an average 4.4% decrease in admits. Coupled with eventual enrollment outcomes, this represented an average 16.6% increase in yield compared to the prior year.
Interesting results also emerged when we analyzed yield metrics for students who used MeetYourClass relative to students who did not use MeetYourClass. We found that students engaged with MeetYourClass were 12.28 times more likely to enroll than non-users and were 5.7 times more likely to enroll than students in the prior year.
We are not claiming that MeetYourClass is completely causative as it pertains to yield—especially since students who are more likely to enroll are likely pre-disposed to joining a platform like MeetYourClass in the first place. That said, as a result, a student engaging with MeetYourClass creates a powerful signal for the institution.
We found that when a student commits their profile to a given school on MeetYourClass, they follow through with enrolling 93.9% of the time. This is invaluable information for admissions teams to understand where students are in their decision process, and to better direct their time and resources. This is expanded in the Operational Improvements section below.
Melt Reduction
Where we do believe there is a causative relationship between a student joining MeetYourClass and their enrollment outcome is in reducing summer melt.
Among partner institutions that track deposit data, students using MeetYourClass experienced a 55.1% lower average summer melt rate compared to non-users, and a 42.1% lower summer melt rate relative to the previous admissions cycle overall. This represented a 12.7% reduction in overall institutional summer melt when comparing the Fall 2024 to the Fall 2025 admissions cycle.
We believe this reduction in summer melt can largely be attributed to students, on average, making 51.4 new connections through MeetYourClass. A robust peer network provides both the support needed to navigate enrollment and the social pressure to follow through on their decision. This is expanded in the Increased Engagement section below.
How MeetYourClass Achieved These Outcomes
Increased Engagement
The core objective of MeetYourClass Engage—encompassing the MeetYourClass platform and Instagram communities we set up for each of our partners—is to help students drive their enrollment decision and transition to campus.
Students primarily use MeetYourClass to build their community and peer-network—using it to look for friends, roommates, study buddies, people to carpool to events with, etc. Conversations commonly start around things like majors, campus life, hobbies, and excitement about coming to campus.
By analyzing activity on MeetYourClass and fluctuations in Instagram followers/following, we deduced that students with complete profiles make an average of 51.4 new connections—all before classes ever start. The formation of these connections is most highly concentrated between when a student is admitted to a given school and when they have finalized their enrollment decision. With 75% of respondents prioritizing their prospective social life when choosing where to enroll—according to our 2026 College Decision Playbook—we believe these connections are pivotal to their enrollment decisions.
During what might be considered a quiet time in enrollment management—where the funnel has been generated and financial aid packages have been sent out, but students aren’t quite ready to pay deposits or sign up for orientation—students are silently gathering more qualitative information about the institution to better understand if it is a good fit for them.
Added Marketing Touchpoints
In addition to helping students make connections, MeetYourClass acted as an always-on, 24/7 marketing channel for our partners. Each “Class of 2029” Instagram account was on average actively followed by more individuals than the size of the incoming class. This led to engagement every time a prospective student opened Instagram—an app already used by 87% of teenagers on a monthly basis (Source).
Aside from occasional partner announcements, 99% of the content on each “Class of 2029” Instagram account was student-generated. When a student creates a profile on MeetYourClass, they are given the option to “feature me on the ‘Class of 2029’ Instagram.” As a result, the content on Instagram is of students themselves—students who are expressing their excitement about potentially attending the university. This is something we believe to be much more impactful than a polished advertisement directly from the university.
To understand the magnitude of engagement and touchpoints these “features” garnered on Instagram, we want to call out two particular metrics:
On Instagram, “Reach” refers to the number of unique, individual people who saw content at least once. On average, each “Class of 2029” community reached more individuals than 91x the size of each partner’s respective incoming class size.
On Instagram, “Views” refers to the number of times content shows up on someone’s screen and they actually play or look at it. Across our partners, their respective “Class of 2029” accounts garnered more views on average than $13,606 in ad spend. For one partner, a mid-sized private university in the Midwest, they garnered more views than $61,327 in equivalent ad spend.
We dive into figures like this with even greater detail in our 2025 Engagement Case Study.
These dynamics compound to create an organic viral loop. By following pages to identify future classmates and sharing their own features, students drive a secondary layer of influence that extends far beyond the platform. This amplifies brand awareness through trusted personal networks, solidifying engagement and preventing melt well ahead of commitment day.
Operational Improvements
Due to the communities we set up through MeetYourClass Engage, intent signals are visible even when students aren’t engaging with mass communications.
The core objective of MeetYourClass Enroll—our administrative dashboard and CRM integrations—is to save counselors time and create the insights needed for them to focus on the right students. MeetYourClass does not replace counselors—it amplifies their capacity.
When a student signs up for MeetYourClass, part of the profile creation process is to indicate where they are in their decision process. They select from the following options:
“I’m Researching (Haven’t applied yet)”
“I’ve Applied (Waiting to hear back)”
“I’ve Been Accepted (Got in, still exploring options)”
“I’m Committed (100% going)”
When a student indicates that they are Committed, whether to your institution or another, we’ve found that such labels accurately mapped to eventual enrollment outcomes 93.9% of the time. We also measured that positive indications (news that a student was verbally committed to one of our partners) front-ran official deposits or confirmations 13.7% of the time.
In addition to self-selected enrollment labels, we also analyzed data from the MeetYourClass platform and Instagram to create a preference score for each student.
Such information enabled us to surface Weekly Alerts highlighting which students counselors should prioritize, while also providing personalized insight into what each student was seeking in their college experience. For example:
Were they deciding between two schools, but one was close to home and one was on the other side of the state?
Which resources were they constantly clicking on? Did every session with a given university start with clicking into its Net Price Calculator?
What are their hobbies? Was it clear through their profile that they were interested in joining a club soccer team?
In addition to surfacing insights, MeetYourClass saved our partners significant time by completely handling the management of their communities across both our platform and Instagram. Many of our partners had previously managed “Class of” Instagram pages themselves. MeetYourClass handles the following for every partner through automation and complimentary service offerings:
Setting up a “Class of 2029” Instagram community, including all aspects of graphic creation and upkeep of account health.
Executing both a feed and story post for each student who wanted to be featured on the “Class of 2029” Instagram.
Authenticating student identities and moderating any content they post.
Mapping community members to university CRM records.
Monitoring for if students ever follow/unfollow Instagram accounts, change their Instagram bios, or leave comments on posts.
Generating and posting Instagram story highlights for each university’s resources on MeetYourClass, such as links to scheduling a tour, the net price calculator, housing forms, or whichever next steps they wanted to get in front of students.
Through these automations and complimentary service offerings, we estimate that MeetYourClass saved our partners ~118 hours on average. This work would have otherwise been concentrated during yield season, and would have distracted from higher-leverage, less tedious work streams.
Methodology
This case study incorporates results from all 16 MeetYourClass partner institutions active during the Fall 2025 admissions cycle.
Engagement Data: Aggregate platform and Instagram metrics were captured and analyzed across the full cohort of 16 partners.
Enrollment Outcomes: Specific yield, deposit, and melt data is based on the nine partner institutions that provided student-level records.
Data Integrity: To ensure an accurate representation of performance, this study utilizes all available data points provided to us. Any variation in sample size reflects differences in institutional reporting capabilities, not selective exclusion.
Implementation Context: Results are naturally influenced by timeline; partners that launched and promoted communities earlier in the cycle observed the strongest correlation with positive enrollment outcomes.
About MeetYourClass
From strategic reach to successful matriculation, MeetYourClass builds the community and provides the intent data to bolster every stage of the enrollment process.
MeetYourClass offers four solutions:
Engage: Through the MeetYourClass app and a suite of social media integrations (e.g. with Instagram), Engage helps prospective college students meet each other before campus.
Enroll: A solution powered by Engage data to infer where students are in their decision process, which alternative schools they’re considering, and which factors are driving their enrollment decisions.
Reach: The first social listening and content management tools purpose built for higher ed. Manage all your social media assets and see which content is trending across the entire industry.
Consult: White-glove financial aid optimization and enrollment forecasting services.
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