California Baptist University and GoalQuest Inc. today announced increases in undergraduate applications to the university and admitted student deposits over last year. As of last month, the school had received 170 more applications than it had during its entire 2006 recruiting cycle. CBU admissions officials also announced that they had received 17% more deposits than last year. The university will continue to accept applications over the summer and therefore expects these numbers to grow.

CBU has seen steady increases in both applicants and matriculants since it began using GoalQuest's eCRUIT™ and EYOp™ (Enrollment Yield Optimization) tools in 2003. The school recently added parallel GoalQuest parent programs to aid recruitment and believes that these have helped fuel enrollment growth.

"Our university has consistently grown with GoalQuest for the past three years," said Allen Johnson, CBU director of undergraduate admissions. "These are not programs we could do without. It has been a great relationship and they have been incredibly responsive to our needs."

CBU's eCRUIT program, known to prospects as Stepping Stones, gives students a range of advice and tools to help navigate the college admissions process. The program combines expert-written editorial features, such as "Making the Right Decision," "Make a List, Check It Twice" and "What's Your Type?" with interactive question/answer features and embedded "pulse" surveys designed to relay real-time data about desirable prospects to recruiters.

Students offered admission to CBU are invited to join e-Vision, the university's EYOp program. Like Stepping Stones, e-Vision provides a menu of helpful topics designed to ease the transition to college. In addition, the program utilizes UBlog™ and UPeers™, two e-community features that give participants the opportunity to connect with other admitted students as well as designated CBU upperclassmen. These online "student ambassadors" also help moderate the community and contribute blog content using the company's toolset.

Dr. Adam Troy, GoalQuest's director of research, conducted four studies examining program use by prospective CBU students and their parents. Findings revealed that program users applied and enrolled at statistically significantly higher rates than non-program users. "These results are consistent with what we are observing at dozens of other schools," said Dr. Troy, "The GoalQuest approach capitalizes on the increased use of the Internet by students to educate themselves on their college choices, and provides the technology to bring that information right to their inbox. The easier you make it for students to access college-related information, the more favorable students will perceive the information."