8.7 million reasons you should be preparing for the Search Cliff now

$8.7 million in lost net tuition revenue.

That’s the average expected impact of the Search Cliff, the upcoming drop in Search Name availability due to the College Board’s shift to digital PSAT and SAT exams, based on the anonymized results of more than 200 colleges who have used CollegeVine’s Search Cliff calculator. 

The data also reveal that the average school will see a drop of 1,500 applications and 186 enrollments, and nearly 50% of schools are set to face a net tuition revenue drop of over $10 million. 

Estimate the impact of the Search Cliff on your institution with the free Search Cliff Calculator. In two minutes or less, get a personalized estimate based on your name buying strategy and funnel. 

Wait, what's happening with Search?

Let’s take a step back. I’m sure many of you saw the news that the College Board is taking its PSAT and SAT exams digital this fall (PSAT) and next spring (SAT). While the impact on student test-takers has been broadly discussed, the massive and adverse impact on Search has slipped under the radar. 

Due to digital privacy laws in many states, the College Board will be forced to remove PSAT and school-day SAT test takers from their Student Search Service, making them unavailable to colleges who traditionally license those names for marketing purposes. As paper-test takers age out of the pool, this will build into a staggering 40% drop in overall name availability from College Board Search that we’re calling the Search Cliff. 

As a result, there will be 840,000 fewer senior names available for licensing in Search, but the drop off for younger students is even steeper: 11th grade name availability is projected to drop by ~50%, 10th grade availability by ~70%, and 9th grade availability by ~90%. 

Some states will get hit much harder than others

When you look at specific regions, the story gets even darker. California is set to see a 54% fall in name availability with 300,000 fewer names and 100,000 fewer seniors! Name availability in Texas (-250k), New York (-150k), and Florida (-140k) will also drop off massively. 

Can your institution still fill its class without half of your California prospects from Search? 

Big states like California and Texas aren’t even the worst off. In ACT-dominated states like Tennessee (-73%), Nevada (-82%), Wisconsin (-89%), and South Dakota (-90%), Search name availability will be utterly crushed. In many of these states, the College Board has maintained reasonable Search availability by hawking the PSAT to states and school districts as a competency exam for 10th grade students. After the digital shift, Search availability will be annihilated. 

Some states will be relatively better off due to robust weekend SAT participation, but even states like Connecticut (-24%) and South Carolina (-30%) will see major drop offs. In fact, all 50 states in the US will see a drop in name availability of at least 15%.

A Roadmap for Surviving the Search Cliff

So how does your institution survive the Search Cliff? You may be tempted to think that the answer is College Board’s “Connections” offering, which is essentially an ad in a mobile app. Colleges will have to depend on students downloading a standalone College Board app to access their scores and continuing to use this app once they have viewed their scores in order to get sufficient visibility of their ads. Even for the small proportion of students that do stick around within the app, successful inquiry generation will rely on students clicking the display ad—which on average happens 0.1% of the time—and then continuing down whatever post-click journey lies ahead, in which there’s bound to be additional drop-off.

For most colleges, that means it's critical to develop new lead sources as soon as possible—like, today.

Here are a couple of key steps to take: 

First and foremost, make sure that your leadership and cabinet are aware of the Search Cliff and its implications. You will need their support to rework your budget and allocate the appropriate funds.

Next, ensure that you have enough budget allocated to develop new channels. Consider allocating at least 15% of your budget this year to test out new channels, and then allocating 25% of your budget next year to make sure that your gap from the Search Cliff is covered.

Finally, you’ll want to confirm the viability of your new channel. Make sure that they are solving for inquiry, not just a volume of cold names, because that is the biggest gap created by the Search Cliff. Run an ROI analysis on these new channels to ensure that they will backfill your gap from Search.

The Search Cliff represents a devastating hit to your enrollment funnel as it operates today. But if you take decisive action now, you can still offset the consequences.