Population Cheat Sheet

Use this guide to help you better understand and navigate the nuances of student audiences in Slate.

Selecting the right population is critical to ensuring students receive relevant, timely and helpful communication throughout their journey. Whether you’re building a message from scratch or refining an existing strategy, use this resource to learn, refresh or rethink how you approach audience selection. Thoughtful targeting not only improves the student experience, but also helps reduce confusion, message fatigue and overlap across partners.

Recipient Type (Who Gets the Email)

Students: Message goes directly to the student

Students with Parent/Family cc’d: Student receives the message and parent/family are copied for awareness

Parent/Family Only: Message goes directly to parent/family only

Depending on who’s included in the student’s record, this may include legal guardian, parents and step-parents

Common misuses:

Parent/family only emails with student-focused calls to action (CTAs)

Assuming parent/family can accept offers or complete student tasks

Student Type

Future Freshmen: High school students or applicants who have been admitted, or are in the process of applying, to begin their first year as undergraduates (with less than 11 college credit hours).

Includes: Middle school (8th grade) and high school freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Transfer Students: Non-first-year students that are transferring from a different institution.

Common misuses:

Targeting parents of transfer students — at this stage in their college journey we’re communicating directly with the student
Including transfer students when sending first-year student communications

Entry Year of Student

Entry year (EY) means the year the student is expected to start at Purdue. Entry term options include: All Terms, Spring, Summer and Fall.

It’s important to consider:

Application open/close dates
Closed programs (i.e. trying to encourage pre-app students to apply to a program for entry in the summer but the program is only available to applicants for the fall)
Application term vs. Admit term (i.e. students who applied for the fall but were admitted to the summer term). When only communicating to fall admits, you may be excluding a population of students admitted to the summer.

Includes: Only students starting in the selected year

Does not include: Students from prior entry terms

Common misuses:

Inviting students to apply after the application cycle has closed
- Mixing entry years in time-sensitive messages
  - Misuse example: Sending a fall application-related message with “apply by our Early Action deadline to take the next step toward becoming a Boilermaker” to both high school seniors and high school juniors. This is not a relevant email for high school juniors.
  - Solution: Adjust your strategic communications plan to approach rising seniors and juniors differently, so the call to action is appropriate.
  - Misuse example: A spring prospective event invitation lists the current entry year as the audience, but the admission application has already closed so at this point students would have already needed to apply in order to be considered for the current entry term.
  - Solution: Adjust audience to the following entry year to then invite students who still qualify as prospective/pre-applicant.
Not tailoring messages to meet students where they are in their journey (e.g., action items for a high school senior vs. a high school freshman).

NOTE: Annually in July, students are moved from one entry year to the next. It’s best to stop communications running at the end of June and adjust for the entry year update.

Student’s Prospect Status – Quick Reference Guide

If your message is for	Use the population
Students who have shown interest but haven’t applied	Pre-applicant inquiries
Students who submitted an application	Applicants – no decision
All admitted students	Non-deposited + Deposited (All Admits)
Admitted students still deciding if they’d like to attend Purdue	Non-deposited Admits Only
Students who accepted their offer of admission to Purdue	Deposited Admits Only

Pre-Applicant Inquiries

Includes:

Prospective students who filled out an interest form or engaged with Purdue at an on or off campus event, etc.

Students interested in Purdue but without an application on file

Does not include: Applicants, admits or anyone with no recorded interest

Common misuses:

Sending “apply now” messages after the application for that entry year has closed

Mixing this group with applicants in the same email, causing confusion and conflicts with email unsubscribe settings
- Pre-applicants must be allowed to unsubscribe

Applicants – No Decision

Includes: All students with an application on file, including those awaiting submission, submitted but incomplete or complete but awaiting decision

Does not include: Students who have not applied or who already received a decision

Common misuses:

Sending admit-style messaging before decisions are released – leading students to believe they know their decision before it’s formally communicated
Combining applicants with pre-applicants in visit or status sensitive emails

NOTE: This audience should be communicated to sparingly, if at all. Keep in mind, there are little to no actions available to this audience.

Non-deposited + Deposited (All Admits)

Includes:

Deposited admits (accepted offer + paid $500 deposit or waiver)
Non-deposited admits (still deciding)

Does not include: Denied or deferred students

Common misuses:

Sending “Accept Your Offer” emails to deposited students
Using All Admits when you only want undecided students

Non-deposited Admits Only

Includes:

Students admitted who have not committed to Purdue via accepting their offer and paying their deposit
Students who have viewed their admit decision, and students who have an admit decision and seven days have passed since decision release without viewing their decision

Does not include: Deposited (accepted) admits or denied students

Common misuses:

Including deposited students and duplicating messaging
Forgetting to exclude Early Start students who already committed

Deposited Admits Only

Includes: Fully committed students; accepted offer with deposit or waiver

Does not include: Non-deposited admits and or denied students

Common misuses:

Sending “accept your offer” CTAs
Including students who are admitted but haven’t deposited yet

Early Start (Opt Into Summer/ Deposited Only)

Includes: Students who are eligible and committed to Early Start (opting to start in the summer, not required)

Does not include:

Fall only students
Math Momentum (required to begin in the summer)

Common misuses:

Forgetting Early Start requires a deposit in order to switch OR that Early Start students have already deposited
Including Early Start students with an ‘Accept your Offer’ call to action
Including Early Start students in “switch to Early Start” campaigns

NOTE: Students must accept their offer and deposit before switching to Early Start.

Math Momentum (Summer Required)

Includes: Students who are admitted to summer term and must begin in the summer to attend Purdue

Does not include:

Fall students
Early Start students (summer opt in)

Common misuses:

Forgetting Math Momentum is required to begin in the summer, ‘we can’t wait to see you this fall’
Excluding from communications aimed at all admits

Residency

Residency refers to the location of the student’s home address.

Includes:

All Residencies, Domestic (within the U.S.), International (outside of the U.S.) or International (living domestically)
Further define with geographic details (i.e., domestic, within 60 miles of Indianapolis, Indiana)

Common misuses:

Sending resident-only scholarships to non-residents
Including international students on scholarship messaging
Inviting international students to on campus only events

Career and College Interest (Pre-applicant Only)

Includes:

Students whose career interests align with the message goal and the interests assigned to a given college
Students who have indicated interest in a particular college

Does not include:

Students whose interests don’t realistically connect to the program
Interests without a direct connection to the college
Interests without a natural pathway or available program in the college

Common misuses:

Over filtering and excluding students who are still exploring
Using career interest instead of major when major is more appropriate
Overreaching to Undecided students
Communicating to students in colleges/schools that aren’t your own without permission from that college/school
Using stated interests to promote your own college while disparaging or speaking about the characteristics of another college

NOTE: For applicants or admits, the ‘interest’ is the college and major they have applied to or been admitted to.