The effectiveness of freshman recruiting strategies: an analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

A steady flow of bright, talented and focused freshmen is a goal of any undergraduate engineering program. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, a diverse set of programs to reach out to promising high school students, their parents and teachers has evolved over the last decade. They include a freshman merit scholarship program, a by-invitation-only, day-long campus visit program for high-ability juniors and seniors and their parents, an Expanding Your Horizons program based on the national model for middle-school girls and NSF-sponsored teaching enhancement programs for high school math and science teachers and counsellors. Work in progress reported here analyzes the relative effectiveness of two of the University´s most important undergraduate recruiting programs: their day-long campus visit program called ESTEAM, and their freshmen merit scholarship program