What Does It Take to Win in Graduate Enrollment? The Data is In.

If you work in graduate enrollment, you already know the pressure. Flat enrollment numbers, students comparing more programs than ever, and the constant push to prove your program's value before a prospective student even applies.  

Prior to joining PeopleGrove, I spent my career on campus and serving campuses, leading enrollment efforts at two different private institutions and working as a consultant for graduate programs across the country. I can empathize with the challenges you face, and I know firsthand that the question never really changes: how do we compete and win when every institution is saying roughly the same thing? 

Earlier this year, NAGAP and PeopleGrove partnered to survey the full NAGAP membership on how graduate enrollment leaders are delivering and leveraging career advancement opportunities. The full findings are available here in the report, The Critical Components of Leveraging Career Advancement in Graduate Marketing and Recruitment. What follows are some of the standout findings. 

Career advancement is the baseline, not your competitive edge. 

Today's graduate students arrive with a clear agenda. 86% are motivated primarily by career goals (RNL 2025 Graduate Student Recruitment Report), and 76% expect their institution to clearly outline the career outcomes tied to their program before they enroll (RNL 2025 Graduate Student Recruitment Report; EducationDynamics 2026 Modern Learner Report). They are not asking whether higher education has value in the abstract. They are asking whether your program is worth it. Your ability to answer those questions shape everything about how they evaluate and choose between you and your growing list of competitors. 

Students are asking three questions. Is your program answering them? 

Every prospective graduate student wants to know: will this program actually accelerate my career? Does this school connect me to the people and opportunities I need? And can I see the return on investment from day one? 

Every institution tries to differentiate itself, but the messages often sound the same. Small class sizes, faculty who care, a close-knit cohort. What no other institution has is your alumni and your outcomes. That is your true differentiator, and it is the most credible answer to all three questions. Programs that lead with and showcase their alumni outcomes and stories will be the ones who consistently win. 

Students Want Relationships. Most programs Are Investing Elsewhere. 

When we asked enrollment professionals which career advancement opportunities resonate most with prospective students, alumni networking ranked first at 83%, followed by employer networking at 80% and real-world course projects at 71% (NAGAP x PeopleGrove, 2026). Traditional career services like resume prep and career assessments ranked at the bottom. Yet when we asked where programs are investing most, internships and resume writing support came out on top.  

Alumni networking, the highest student priority, received meaningful investment from only 32% of institutions (NAGAP x PeopleGrove, 2026). Programs remain strongest in transactional career services and weakest in the relationship-based pathways that are most central to how careers actually advance. So students are asking for networking and alumni connections and institutions are responding with the traditional career services solutions of resume writing and interview preparation. For graduate programs to win, alignment between prospective student expectations and their offerings must be a priority. 

The Gap Between Awareness and Action 

The share of enrollment professionals who believe 80% or more of their students are primarily driven by career advancement as a reason to pursue a graduate degree jumped from 37% to 64% in a single year (NAGAP x PeopleGrove, 2026). Yet 46% of institutions still promote career advancement only sometimes, rarely, or not at all during recruiting (NAGAP x PeopleGrove, 2026). I know from experience how hard it is to translate outcomes into recruitment materials consistently. Getting alumni stories updated, keeping them relevant, and surfacing them at every touchpoint is genuinely difficult work. But that difficulty is exactly why it represents such a big opportunity. If nearly half of your competitors are not leading with career outcomes, the programs that do will stand out. 

How to Compete and Win: The Connection-Centered Approach 

The programs winning competitive graduate recruitment are the ones making relationships visible, accessible, and scalable from first contact through enrollment. 

The programs that win will lead with alumni stories and career outcomes from the very first touchpoint, connect prospective students to their network before they even apply, and make those connections available digitally and on-demand, not just at campus events. 

At PeopleGrove, our Engagement Hub was built to make to help you organize and scale your alumni engagement with prospective and current students. Our partners use the platform to connect applicants and admitted students with current students and alumni, and once those admitted students enroll, they become the next generation of voices speaking to prospective students coming behind them. The circle keeps going. It is how the relationships that drive enrollment decisions can happen at scale, not as a one-off effort dependent on staff bandwidth. 

If you want to see how it works or talk through what this looks like for your program, click here to schedule a time to speak with a PeopleGrove expert.