Inquiry Volume and Reach — Fall 2026 vs Fall 2025

Definition

Why are inquiries down for Fall 2026 — did we fail to reach this audience? This page answers both halves of that question: where the missing inquiry volume actually went (traced through Slate intake sources), and whether the people in our funnel were contacted (traced through 307 million email message records).

Two terms used throughout, in plain language:

• Contact volume per prospect — the average number of emails we sent to each person in the inquiry pool. “How many times did we knock on each door?”
• Web-engaged inquiry pool — inquiries who have actually done something on our website (visited a page, submitted a form). The contrast group is purchased names that receive our emails but have never once visited — entries on a mailing list, not engaged prospects.

Tip

The bottom line: Fall 2026 isn’t a down year — Fall 2025 was an unusually up year, inflated by an oversized College Board name purchase. Fall 2026 is the second-highest inquiry year on record, applicants held flat, contact per prospect went up, and the inquiries who actually engage with us grew 20%.

Summary

Fall 2026 inquiries are down 37,846 (−15.4%) vs Fall 2025, while applicants held nearly flat (−2.4%). But the multi-year view shows the comparison year is the anomaly:

Term	Inquiries
Fall 2021	133,885
Fall 2022	151,662
Fall 2023	159,082
Fall 2024	205,616
Fall 2025	246,495 ← the outlier year
Fall 2026	208,649

Fall 2026 sits above Fall 2024 and every year before it. The “decline” is a reversion to trend after a one-year spike — and the spike traces to a single purchasing decision (below).

	Fall 2025	Fall 2026	Change
Inquiries (status Inquiry or Applicant)	246,495	208,649	−37,846 (−15.4%)
Applicants	44,817	43,756	−1,061 (−2.4%)

Where the volume went: one name-buy decision

Tracing every inquiry to its Slate intake source, the swing is dominated by a single source — College Board Student Search Service — and its own trajectory confirms Fall 2025 was the spike, not Fall 2026 the collapse:

Term	Student Search Names	Applicants	App Rate
Fall 2023	17,290	5,816	33.6%
Fall 2024	50,359	16,442	32.7%
Fall 2025	82,062 (+63%)	23,262	28.4% ← diluted
Fall 2026	46,663	17,049	36.5% ← best in series

That one source accounts for ~94% of the net year-over-year decline. Other cuts (state name-list orders, several international fair lists) were largely offset by increased buying from Encoura, Cappex/EAB, College Greenlight, and CollegeVine.

The reversion is remarkably precise: Fall 2026’s pre-applicant inquiry count (164,893) landed within 137 people of Fall 2024’s (165,030).

Two efficiency findings from the Student Search trajectory:

• The Fall 2025 mega-buy hit diminishing returns. Buying 63% more names dropped the group’s application rate four points. The marginal 31,703 names yielded applicants at ~21.5% — well below the ~33% the core pool delivers. Fall 2026’s leaner buy posted the best rate in the series (36.5%).
• Much of the Search-attributed conversion appears non-incremental. Fall 2026 bought 35,399 fewer Search names and lost 6,213 Search-attributed applicants — yet total applicants fell by only 1,188. Other sources absorbed ~5,000 of them, suggesting many Search-name students apply regardless and are simply credited to whichever channel captured them first. The name buy was partly purchasing attribution for demand that already existed.

Note

Unlike the graduate vendor lists (~1% application rates), Student Search is not an inert list — its names apply at 28–37% under first-source attribution. It functions as early identification of real prospects. The efficiency question is about the size of the buy, not whether the channel works.

Intake Source	Fall 2025	Fall 2026	Change
College Board Student Search Service	82,062	46,663	−35,399
State name-list order (.csv)	36,588	23,745	−12,843
Athletics Questionnaire	30,398	18,077	−12,321
International fair lists (several)	~6,000	~1,000	~−5,000
Encoura	5,518	9,875	+4,357
Cappex / EAB (several files)	~1,900	~8,600	+6,700
Africa Virtual Fair + EdUSA lists	~20	~9,200	+9,200
College Greenlight	3,469	5,589	+2,120
CollegeVine	3,155	5,093	+1,938

Note

The Athletics Questionnaire decline (−12,321) is not a name buy — it is recruited-athlete questionnaire volume and reflects a recruiting or process change. It deserves its own investigation and is not explained by the purchasing story on this page.

Did we fail to contact anyone? No — reach was identical, effort was higher

Joining the inquiry cohorts to the full email message history:

	Fall 2025	Fall 2026
% of inquiries reached by email	96.6%	96.3%
Contact volume per prospect (avg emails)	50.6	57.0
% who opened or clicked	85.3%	85.8%
Never messaged at all	1.0%	1.4%

Contact volume per prospect increased for Fall 2026. The missing 37,846 inquiries are names we never acquired — you cannot email a name you didn’t buy.

The buried headline: the engaged pool grew

Splitting each cohort by whether the person has ever generated a web touch (page visit or form submission):

Segment	Fall 2025	Fall 2026	Avg Emails	% Opened	% Clicked
Web-engaged	87,741	105,749 (+20.5%)	~62–66	~90–94%	64–75%
Never visited (no web touch)	158,754	102,900 (−35%)	~42–52	~81%	12–14%

The never-visited names were heavily contacted — 42–52 emails each, 81% opened — but almost none ever click, and none reach the website. Email reaches them; it doesn’t move them. The entire inquiry decline is concentrated in this inert segment, while the web-engaged pool — the one that produces applicants — grew by 18,008 people.

Caution

Open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which auto-fetches images and registers “opens” the student never saw. The click column is the honest engagement measure — and it shows a 5x gap between segments (64–75% vs 12–14%).

Key Insight

The right frame is not “Fall 2026 is down” — it’s “Fall 2025 was up.” Fall 2025’s inquiry count was inflated by an unusually large College Board Student Search purchase (82K names vs ~50K in adjacent years); Fall 2026 reverted to the normal buying level and still posted the second-highest inquiry total on record. Meanwhile contact volume per prospect went up, applicants held flat, and the web-engaged inquiry pool grew 20%. The padding shrank; the prospects grew.

Why This Is Important

“Inquiries are down 15%” is exactly the kind of headline that triggers alarm in a leadership meeting — and acted on at face value, it invites the wrong fix (buy more names, spend more on volume). This analysis shows the decline is an acquisition-mix decision with almost no effect on real pipeline: the students who engage, click, and apply are more numerous than last cycle.

It also gives leadership a durable framework: judge the funnel by the web-engaged inquiry pool and applicant volume, not raw inquiry counts, because raw counts are dominated by how many names were purchased in a given year.

Methodology

Inquiry definition: persons in persons_dashboard with status IN ('Applicant','Inquiry'), assigned to a term by COALESCE(application_term, intended_term). Both terms are complete cycles — creation dates for each run through late June 2026.

Intake source: each person’s earliest Slate source record (source_records → sources → source_formats, ordered by sources.created_at), labeled by format name or source summary.

Email reach: the messages table (307M rows) joined to each cohort. “Reached” = at least one message with status sent, open, click, or delivered. “Engaged” = at least one open or click.

Web-engaged: the person has at least one row in person_touches (pings + form responses).

Note

Tracking gap: ~13% of the “never visited” group clicked an email yet show zero web touches — click destinations may not be ping-instrumented, or the click didn’t identify them. “No web touch” therefore slightly overstates inertness, but not enough to change the story.

Alternative explanations tested and ruled out:

• Label leakage — inquiries did not simply lose their term assignment: NULL-term inquiry records are stable-to-declining by creation year (10.1K in 2024 → 9.4K in 2025 → 6.9K in 2026 YTD).
• Term shift — Fall 2026 names were not mislabeled Fall 2027: the Fall 2027 cohort (79,939 inquiries, 20,252 Student Search names) is forming on a normal early-cycle trajectory.
• Incomplete cycle — both cohorts’ records run through late June 2026; Fall 2026 undergraduate recruiting is essentially complete.

Caution

Still to verify with the enrollment team: whether the Fall 2025 Student Search spike (and the Fall 2026 reversion) was an institutional purchasing decision or a consequence of College Board restructuring Student Search name licensing during this period. Either way the data story holds; the attribution of why belongs to the Search account owner.

Query

Inquiry Volume by Term

SELECT
  COALESCE(application_term, intended_term) AS term,
  COUNT(*) AS inquiries,
  SUM(CASE WHEN status = 'Applicant' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS applicants
FROM persons_dashboard
WHERE status IN ('Applicant', 'Inquiry')
  AND COALESCE(application_term, intended_term) IN ('Fall 2025', 'Fall 2026')
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1;

Change by Intake Source

WITH inq AS (
  SELECT person_id, COALESCE(application_term, intended_term) AS term
  FROM persons_dashboard
  WHERE status IN ('Applicant', 'Inquiry')
    AND COALESCE(application_term, intended_term) IN ('Fall 2025', 'Fall 2026')
),

origin AS (
  SELECT person_id, intake FROM (
    SELECT
      sr.record_id AS person_id,
      COALESCE(sf.name, s.summary) AS intake,
      ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY sr.record_id ORDER BY s.created_at ASC) AS rn
    FROM source_records sr
    JOIN sources s ON sr.source_id = s.id
    LEFT JOIN source_formats sf ON s.format_id = sf.id
    JOIN inq ON sr.record_id = inq.person_id
  ) WHERE rn = 1
)

SELECT
  COALESCE(o.intake, '(no source record)') AS intake_source,
  SUM(CASE WHEN i.term = 'Fall 2025' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS fall_2025,
  SUM(CASE WHEN i.term = 'Fall 2026' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS fall_2026,
  SUM(CASE WHEN i.term = 'Fall 2026' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)
    - SUM(CASE WHEN i.term = 'Fall 2025' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS change
FROM inq i
LEFT JOIN origin o ON i.person_id = o.person_id
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY change ASC;

Email Reach and Web Engagement by Cohort

WITH inq AS (
  SELECT person_id, COALESCE(application_term, intended_term) AS term
  FROM persons_dashboard
  WHERE status IN ('Applicant', 'Inquiry')
    AND COALESCE(application_term, intended_term) IN ('Fall 2025', 'Fall 2026')
),

webtouch AS (
  SELECT DISTINCT person_id FROM person_touches
),

msg AS (
  SELECT
    m.person_id,
    COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE m.status IN ('sent', 'open', 'click', 'delivered')) AS emails_received,
    COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE m.status IN ('open', 'click')) AS emails_engaged,
    COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE m.status = 'click') AS clicks
  FROM messages m
  JOIN inq ON m.person_id = inq.person_id
  GROUP BY m.person_id
)

SELECT
  i.term,
  CASE WHEN w.person_id IS NOT NULL THEN 'web-engaged' ELSE 'never visited' END AS segment,
  COUNT(*) AS people,
  ROUND(COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE COALESCE(msg.emails_received, 0) > 0) * 100.0 / COUNT(*), 1) AS pct_emailed,
  ROUND(AVG(COALESCE(msg.emails_received, 0)), 1) AS avg_emails,
  ROUND(COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE COALESCE(msg.emails_engaged, 0) > 0) * 100.0 / COUNT(*), 1) AS pct_opened,
  ROUND(COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE COALESCE(msg.clicks, 0) > 0) * 100.0 / COUNT(*), 1) AS pct_clicked
FROM inq i
LEFT JOIN webtouch w ON i.person_id = w.person_id
LEFT JOIN msg ON i.person_id = msg.person_id
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY 1, 2;