Shared terminology ensures we understand each other when we collaborate. This list is designed to cover common admissions, marketing, and communications terms.

Admissions Terminology

  • Prospect – A student who has not yet taken a trackable action to demonstrate interest in UIUC. We can have a prospect within our CRM if we’ve purchased that student’s information from an outside source.
  • Inquiry – A student who has taken an action to demonstrate interest in UIUC, regardless of how their information was gathered. Ways that students demonstrate interest include but are not limited to:
    • Replying to an email
    • Filling out a form
    • Registering for an event
  • Applicant – A student who has applied to UIUC but has not yet received a decision.
  • Admitted Student – A student who has applied and received an offer of admission to UIUC.
  • Denied Student – A student who has applied but did not receive an offer of admission to UIUC.
  • Yield – The process of converting admitted students to enrolled students, often expressed as a percentage. Yield efforts refer to activities designed to get admitted students to accept their offer of admission.
  • Melt – The percentage of students who accept their offer of admission but are not enrolled after the tenth day of classes. Over the course of the summer, some students will “melt away” from the incoming class for a variety of reasons.
  • Tenth Day – The tenth day of the semester, at which point the university measures the size and shape of the incoming class based on all of those who are enrolled at that time (also called matriculating).
  • Matriculate – To enroll as a member of the new class.

Marketing & Communications Terminology

  • Content Marketing – The development and distribution of relevant, useful content—blogs, newsletters, white papers, social media posts, emails, videos, and the like—to current and potential customers. Essentially, content marketing is any content that generates interest in a brand without directly promoting the brand itself. (Source: Mailchimp)
  • Call To Action (CTA) – A call to action usually refers to a prompt within a communication that encourages the target audience to do something, such as visit a website, watch a video, etc. Having a clearly defined, user-friendly, accessible call to action is important in most communications.
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – Quantifiable measurements of performance on a particular objective.
  • Personas – Fictional character types based on users or target audience members. Personas can help with formulating marketing and communication strategies by forcing detailed articulation of character qualities, interests, etc.
  • Return on Investment (ROI) – The analysis of an investment, whether in dollars or resources, and the associated outcome. Essentially, ROI addresses the question, “Was the impact worth the cost?”
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process used to optimize a website’s technical configuration, content relevance, and link popularity so its pages can become easily findable, more relevant, and popular toward user search queries, and as a consequence, search engines rank them better. (Source: Mailchimp)