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Enrollment Power Index® Criteria & Methodology
| Ranking Category |
Highest Possible Rating Score |
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| Home Page and Prominence of Admissions link |
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| Admissions Page Design and Navigation |
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| Online Access to Admissions Materials |
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| Ability to Find Key Admissions Information |
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| Ability to Contact Admissions Office |
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| Methodology |
The original purpose of EPI research was to establish a statistically significant measure of
website effectiveness based on specific functional attributes. Effectiveness was defined as a
website’s ability to provide tools to take a student from prospect to applicant, while leaving
the student with a positive impression of the site.
The EPI benchmarks were first identified by Internet and admissions marketing professionals.
These measures have been refined and validated through the nine years of the Enrollment Power
Index research. Since the benchmarks are non-specific to geographic area, institution size or
funding source, all are rated on the same scale to provide an easy-to-use evaluation for
developing your website.
To identify those features with a significant impact on students perception of the site, an
email was sent to over 100,000 college-bound high school students from the NRCCUA database
asking them to rate two websites on four different criteria: appeal, ease of navigation,
completeness of information, and overall quality. Over 3,000 students completed evaluations
on the 45 institutions randomly inserted in the emails to obtain
valid samples. The overall rating was then correlated to specific
criteria identified by the expert panel. The components showing a
positive correlation were included in the final 2007 EPI formula.
With the final list of criteria, over 3,000 sites were evaluated by a team of college-bound
students who were trained to identify the presence or absence of these specific attributes.
These students each assessed over 1,000 sites to maximize a consistent measurement. A minimum of
four student raters evaluated each site in order to ensure a fair evaluation.
Each website was scored on 34 objective criteria weighted to a total of 100 possible points.
These criteria were grouped into five functional areas for scoring purposes. Additional research
was conducted in order to validate the importance of these criteria and the weighting levels.
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