Alpha Schools Admissions Funnel Discussion

Date: May 14, 2025 Participants: Gary Sheng, Tim Joo, Spencer Chubb, Amelia Baldwin, Dmitry Bakaev, Lamar, Arpan, Dallas

Overview

This meeting focused on understanding the complete admissions funnel for Alpha Schools, including metrics, costs, and processes from initial interest to enrollment. The Super Builders team (Gary, Tim, Spencer, Lamar, Arpan, Dallas) sought to understand these processes to help with their respective micro-school expansion efforts, while Amelia and Dmitry provided insights from their roles managing admissions at established and expansion Alpha Schools.

Key Topics and Insights

Team Introductions and Objectives

• Tim Joo explained that participants were working on different micro-school initiatives:
  • Arpan, Lamar, and Dallas: Strata Schools (sports-related micro schools)
  • Spencer: Luma School (trade school micro schools)
  • Gary and Tim: Growth Alpha School
• The common need was understanding the parent journey from interest to enrollment
• Amelia Baldwin introduced herself as managing admissions, with Dmitry Bakaev focused on the technical aspects of the funnel

Admissions Funnel Structure

Expansion Schools vs. Established Schools

Amelia outlined the differences between the processes:

Expansion Schools (New Locations):

"We're generating interest, we're finding a community that they wanna go to. This is done with the expansion team, they're out marketing, they're out boots on the ground, driving up interest in local meetings."

Established Schools:

"For established schools, it comes from marketing. And then we go through a process where once that information, once there's enough interest, then there's going to be a parent info session or a showcase."

Key Stages in the Funnel

1. Interest Generation: Through marketing, social media, or expansion teams
2. Info Sessions/Showcases: Group presentations for parents
   • Called "info sessions" for expansion schools
   • Called "showcases" for established schools
   • Frequency: About 2-6 sessions per month, depending on enrollment needs
3. Shadow Days/Road Shows: Student evaluation experiences
   • For expansion schools ("road shows"): Guides and existing students travel to the new location to simulate a school day
   • For established schools: Prospective students join existing classes for a full day
4. Admissions Decision: Based on student evaluation during shadow day
5. Enrollment: Completing forms and paying deposits

Costs and Conversion Metrics

Dmitry shared limited data on funnel velocity:

"On the average for like Alpha Austin, it's 26 days. From the point that the lead expressed interest to the point that they enrolled. Alpha High School is 22 days. Alpha Phoenix is 15 days."

Key challenges with metrics:

• Data only reliable from March 2025 onward
• UTM parameter tracking issues causing attribution problems
• Debate about true cost of acquisition (Gary estimated much higher than the $4,000 figure he'd heard)

Summer Enrollment Challenges

The team discussed how summer enrollment works:

Amelia: "We have these camps, the summer camps happening in Alpha Austin... what we will be doing is we will be offering an info session and a shadow day integrated into the camp for anybody that's interested."

Dmitry: "Most of the decisions for private schools happen in March... in the summer, you probably, and plus the kids are like, I have a child, like that's going around doing school tours in the summer is probably the last thing he wants to do."

Pricing and Qualification

Amelia shared tuition costs across locations:

"Alpha, Austin and the high school both are 40 each. New York is 65, Santa Barbara is 50. And I think those will go up even next year."

The admissions process includes several qualification steps:

• $800 application fee (non-refundable)
• Shadow day evaluation focusing on student's ability to be coached and take feedback
• Early qualification at showcase to ensure families understand costs

Technical Challenges

Dmitry highlighted several technical issues:

1. Data tracking and attribution problems

   "Prior to March, there was basically just no tracking of anything."

2. Integration challenges between systems

   "There's an SIS. There's an internally developed SIS, student information system... The whole thing is a bit clunky. So there's an effort going on to potentially replace it with a commercial product."

3. Unusual technical constraints

   "A lot of the SISs don't support campuses that span multiple time zones... the only way to support this is you need to spin up a completely separate instance of an SIS for that campus."

Marketing Disconnect

A significant discussion emerged around marketing responsibilities and effectiveness:

Gary: "I've been like pushed because like they saw me do a cool event. They're like, do another event... And I'm like, I feel like I'm being set up to fail, honestly, because I just feel like there's more fundamental issues."

Amelia: "We don't control the website... There were 300 different forms... If I could go in and just adjust the website, I mean, goodness gracious, somebody adjust the website, right?"

Gary shared his experience with marketing head Jason Applebaum:

"I asked for just the status quo, who owns and what's the status quo and the strategy around branding graphics, the website, SEO, SEM, videos, sentiment analysis, personas... He said, not the answer that you want, Gary, but I'm not gonna get this to you."

Planned Improvements

The team discussed several in-progress improvements:

1. A "Find My Match" widget for better lead qualification

   Amelia: "We've got in the works too is a find my match widget that is like a qualifier from the website... where they're rating their belief on AI and academics, what their child would do with three extra hours a day."

2. Automation of the admissions process

   "We have a lot of automations that will be rolling out. We've already started with automating offers going out, working on the shadow day sequence."

3. Process documentation

   Dmitry: "I actually have a lucid chart that sort of talks about just different stages of the funnel and different things that are happening and kind of division."

Next Steps and Action Items

1. Dmitry to share the Lucid Chart funnel visualization with the team
2. Gary to reconsider plans for summer events based on admissions realities
3. Potential follow-up with Rachel Goodlad about expansion school strategies
4. Possible broader discussion with marketing about lead generation improvements
5. Exploration of calculating true customer acquisition costs

Key Quotes

Amelia on summer camps: "The students who are doing an academic portion that are different than the camp, they will have a small separate breakout for the academics. But the other portion that is evaluated for Alpha, which is the workshops and the life skills, the guides are going to be able to make that judgment based on the way the whole camp runs anyway."

Gary on marketing claims: "If the marketing team is owning MQLs, right? Then the cost of converting someone into an MQL is the whole cost of the marketing organization plus all the ad spend, all the organic... Divided by the MQLs, right?"

Dmitry on data challenges: "Going forward, we're okay. Again, we need to fix this ad attribution. That will be fixed this coming week. And I think going forward, we're okay. But I mean, just whatever happened previously..."

Amelia on qualification process: "All of a sudden, if they have a bunch of questions about screen time and they are wondering, are there any days that they're actually not working on the computer and all of these things, it kind of becomes that red flag, or they start to share, is there financial aid?"

Tim on their shared need: "We're all waiting to learn. We're super excited to hear what you have. So please let us know where we can start and I'm sure we'll have clarifying questions as we go through this process."