The Enrollment Advantage of Familiarity: why repeated exposure may matter more than rankings
- Jason J. Christenson
- May 19
- 6 min read
At a recent high school graduation party, I became curious: Individually and off the top of their heads, how many colleges and universities could the junior and senior high school students name?
The results from this informal poll were interesting, though perhaps not surprising. One student named 13 institutions before drawing a blank. Another could only name four. Most landed somewhere between six and nine.
More interesting, however, were the institutions that appeared on those lists. Nearly every student mentioned one or two Ivy League universities despite having no serious intention of applying to or attending those schools. Several named Big Ten schools, particularly if they followed sports. The remainder were a scattered mix of regional universities and community colleges.
With thousands of higher education institutions in the United States and dozens within a reasonable drive of these students, why could they recall so few?
The answer has very little to do with academic fit, tuition cost, institutional mission, or admissions strategy. It has far more to do with familiarity.
In the 1960s, psychologist Robert Zajonc conducted a deceptively simple series of experiments that would go on to shape modern understanding of human behavior, advertising, and decision-making. Participants were shown unfamiliar images, symbols, sounds, and words repeatedly over time. Some appeared only once. Others appeared many times.
The result was fascinating: People consistently developed preference for the things they had seen with frequency. It was not because they understood them better, not because they objectively evaluated or compared them more favorably, and not because they had meaningful engagement with them. Preferences developed only and simply for those things with which they had become familiar. Zajonc called this phenomenon the “Mere Exposure Effect.”
Humans naturally gravitate toward what they recognize. Repeated exposure increases trust, perceived legitimacy, emotional comfort, recall, and social proof, often without conscious awareness.
This behavioral principle has quietly shaped marketing for decades. It helps explain why political yard signs matter, why companies sponsor stadiums, why luxury brands dominate airports, and why repetitive jingles still work long after we wish they would disappear.
Familiarity: Recruitment's Secret Weapon
Exposure is foundational to eventual recruitment and matriculation. No student who has never heard of — or cannot recall — a college or university will seriously consider it, regardless of how well it may fit their goals, finances, or aspirations. Without awareness, there is no opportunity for curiosity, comparison, or inquiry. And without recall, particularly in moments of reflection or decision-making, students may never meaningfully consider an institution’s advantages, distinctives, or potential fit at all.
Higher education has become extraordinarily sophisticated at managing students once they enter the recruitment funnel. But this critical question often receives far less attention: What causes a student to consider a specific institution in the first place?
In many cases, the answer is not rankings, outcomes data, or even cost. It is familiarity.
Today’s students are navigating an environment absolutely saturated with options: dual enrollment, four-year universities, community colleges, trade schools, apprenticeships, certifications, military pathways, direct-to-workforce opportunities… the list goes on.
When human beings face overwhelming optionality, they simplify decision-making with broad filters. One of the most powerful psychological shortcuts is recognition.
Consequently, the institutions students repeatedly encounter over time often gain a disproportionate advantage when moments of consideration finally arrive and the student can simply ascertain:
“I’ve heard of them.”
“I recognize that school.”
“I’ve seen them before.”
“That feels familiar.”
Familiarity lowers psychological resistance. They feel safer, more socially acceptable, mainstream, and easier to explore. By contrast, little-known or entirely unknown institutions often require greater cognitive effort and carry higher perceived risk. In many ways, it is not unlike choosing a chain or franchise restaurant in an unfamiliar city: people often default to the name they recognize, even when the unknown option may objectively be better.
Student Choice Factors & Higher Education
This preference formation often occurs long before a student fills out a form, attends a college fair, opens an email, or appears in a CRM database. In many cases, it can develop before students have even determined what they want to do after high school, evidenced by the large number who enroll in college without declaring a major.
Student uncertainty and direction is hardly unusual. From the time they are young children, students are repeatedly asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answers often evolve dramatically over time as the student matures and individual preferences and interests are discovered and developed. College itself can, and often does, serve as a continuation of that exploration.
Estimates regarding the percentage of students who enter college without a declared major or who change majors at some point during their collegiate career vary widely depending on the study, methodology, institution, and definitions used. Some reports suggest roughly 20–50% of students begin college undecided, while estimates for students who change majors at least once range from approximately 30% to well over half of all students. Regardless of the precise figure, the broader principle remains consistent: for a significant portion of students, academic and career direction is not fully established when institutional preferences and enrollment decisions begin to form.
This reality carries important implications for enrollment and retention strategy. Perhaps most significantly, a student’s preference for a particular institution begins forming while the student is still determining an eventual career path.
If this is true, it suggests that some of the differentiators institutions emphasize most heavily — specific academic programs, rankings, career outcomes, and highly specialized offerings — may play a smaller role in early institutional preference formation than many assume. Before students can evaluate which academic pathway best aligns with their goals, they often must first narrow which institutions even feel familiar, credible, attractive, or worth considering.
In other words, institutional familiarity may precede, and at times outweigh, many of the factors commonly believed to drive college choice. Students do not always begin by selecting a precise academic direction and then identifying the ideal institution to support it. Frequently, the institution itself enters the student’s consideration set first, while the student’s eventual academic and career direction still remains fluid.
Shaping Impressions to Intent
Ultimately, this introduces an important shift in thinking for enrollment and marketing leaders. Shaping institutional familiarity may be just as important as capturing declared intent. These approaches are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are most effective when working in concert with one another.
Students cannot seriously consider institutions that have never meaningfully entered their awareness. The competitive advantage may belong less to the institution with the best late-stage messaging and more to the institution that became psychologically familiar first.
This does not diminish the importance of academic quality, outcomes, affordability, or mission fit. Rather, it recognizes a fundamental truth about human behavior: people frequently choose from what they recognize before fully evaluating what may objectively be the “best” option.
Enrollment and admissions personnel need to engage students earlier in their decision-making journey. By the time a student submits an inquiry or application, many of the impressions influencing that decision have already accumulated.
For admissions and enrollment leaders, the strategic question is becoming harder to ignore:
Are you competing only for the students already actively searching, or are you shaping awareness early enough that your institution becomes part of the student’s consideration set before the search even begins?
In other words, if a group of high school students were asked off the top of their heads to name colleges and universities they know, would your institution naturally come to mind?
About 13th Year™
For colleges, universities, trades, the military, and other postsecondary and career partners, 13th Year™ provides a channel to reach students inside a trusted, high school setting where individual and measurable discovery occurs organically over time. Institutions now can gain access to and leverage early-stage behavioral insights that complement traditional recruitment tools, which enables more informed messaging, stronger brand presence, and improved alignment with student interests before inquiry or application behavior occurs.
This approach drives institutional understanding and expands their prospective pipelines, strengthen yields, and engages students earlier in their journey without increasing friction, or administrative burden on high school counselors. Armed with exposure and familiarity with different programs and pathways, high school students can plan confidently for what comes, following graduation, in their 13th year!
For more information, or to partner with 13th Year™, contact us at 13th-Year.com.
About the Author
Jason J. Christenson is Co-Founder and President of 13th Year™, where he focuses on helping students discover and confidently plan for what comes following high school. His work centers on improving how postsecondary institutions understand and support student decision-making earlier in the journey, enabling colleges, universities, trades, military branches, and workforce organizations to better align their messaging, presence, and opportunities with students’ evolving interests, strengths, and aspirations before traditional recruitment engagement begins.
Christenson is a seasoned entrepreneur, inventor, and writer with a diverse background in launching and leading national service-based businesses across multiple industries. Although born and raised in Indiana, Christenson now resides in Minneapolis with his wife, Brittany, their three children, and a lively crew of pets who collectively demonstrate a consistent disregard for household productivity targets, but whom he nevertheless loves anyway.
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