Competitive Benchmarking is a feature available in Insights Cloud that allows you to compare your current funnel to other institutions. This powerful feature gives you quick access to assess market conditions by comparing your current number to others in your state, or similar institutions in your region, or even similar institutions nationwide. These groups of institutions, or cohorts, are defined by you and shared amongst your staff.
Competitive Benchmarking Report
Funnel Comparison
The Funnel Comparison visualization allows you to compare your institution to the Cohort selected. Each funnel will include the year-over-year difference for each funnel point. For instance, if you select 2024 as the Enrollment Year and the cohort shows +10.2% for inquiries, this means that inquiries are up by an average of 10.2% among your cohort institutions.
Between each funnel point you'll see the funnel conversion rate and the comparison to last year. For instance, if you see 63.6%(-2.3) between Admits and Deposits, this indicates that 63.6% of your admits have made a deposit to date and that's 2.3% lower than this day last year.
National Summary
Other Visualizations
Competitive Benchmarking Filters
Using the geographic filters for State, Geomarket, County, and Zip Code, you have the ability to focus your comparison on students within a specific geographic region. In addition, filters are available for a select number of Demographic, Academic, and Student values that are standard among all colleges submitting data.
Creating a Cohort
To create a cohort, go to the Cohort drop-down menu and select Create Cohort. Here you can define the characteristics of organizations you would like to compare to. These options include:
Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI): 400+ Institutions identified by the federal government with at least 25% Hispanic population.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU): 100+ colleges and universities identified by the US Department of Education.Tribal Colleges: College and Universities identified by the US Department of Education as serving American Indian and Alaska Native students and communities.
Year Level: Indicates whether the institution offers 2-Year or 4-Year programs.
Control: Indicates whether the institution is Public, Private, or Proprietary.
Size: Indicates whether the institution is Small, Medium, or Large in terms of student population.
Religious Affiliation: Indicates if the institution is affiliated with a specific religion.
Other Affiliation: Indicates if the institution is part of a specific consortium, conference, or other affiliation of like institutions.
Classification: Similar to Carnegie Classifications, this allows you to select institutions with similar degree programs.
State: This allows you to select your state, or states in a region to build your cohort.
Any number of these characteristics can be used to define your cohort. Each of these values is maintained by the institutions in College Profile Editor within Encoura. To make sure your institution is up to date, please review your profile regularly.
NOTE: Your cohort must include at least three institutions to be valid. In addition, any institutions in your cohort must have provided enrollment file updates within the past 30 days to be included.
Maintaining Cohorts
Any cohorts created are visible to your team. To rename, edit, or delete cohorts, simply select the edit icon next to the Cohort name in your Cohort menu.