30 Years of Innovation 

Our story began in a burger joint in Harvard Square, where three good colleagues and friends (and soon-to-be founding partners) gathered and sketched the concept behind Art & Science Group on a cocktail napkin.

With a vision of advancing education as a societal good by strengthening the institutions that provide it based on empirically informed strategy, Art & Science Group was officially founded on May 18th, 1994.

A&S’s inaugural project was a collaboration with Rutgers University on a study of key constituencies, refocusing its admission strategy, which resulted in great success over the subsequent five years.

A&S conducted a comprehensive study—the first of its kind—using predictive modeling to understand the likely enrollment impact of changes in tuition to inform pricing strategy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. New application of this methodology empowered RPI to strategically adjust its “sticker price” to align with highly priced competitors, increasing net tuition revenue to support essential programs.

To illuminate evolving trends in higher education, A&S launched studentPOLL, the first of 30 years of national omnibus studies designed to inform the higher education conversation by exploring the opinions, perceptions, and behaviors of college-bound high school students across the country.  

A&S partnered with The Open University in the United Kingdom as its first international collaboration. Subsequent international engagements ranged from exploring interest in pursuing postsecondary education abroad among students in China to studying the feasibility of establishing a new university serving the country of Georgia and surrounding nations.

A&S played a key role in shaping Bucknell University’s strategy to compete with top-tier institutions. Using econometric methods pioneered in the 1980s, A&S refined Bucknell’s financial aid strategy to boost net revenue and student quality. Predictive modeling and Imputed Importance methodology addressed concerns about student demographics and drove changes in communications and strategy to affect the decisions of prospective students. Additionally, an advancement study helped optimize fundraising efforts, contributing to the success of a multi-hundred-million-dollar campaign.

The Bryn Mawr School was among the first independent schools under the A&S umbrella. With our recommendations, Bryn Mawr became an early adopter of sophisticated electronic communications tools and paired with a new marketing communications strategy.

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School was one of the first professional school positioning studies under the A&S name. The study debunked the prevailing belief that rankings and merit aid were the sole levers law schools could control to boost enrollment. Instead, it demonstrated that specific substantive strategic changes could yield effects matching the impact of several rungs on the rankings ladder or several thousand dollars of competitors’ aid packages.

During the biotech boom of this era, Harvey Mudd College leadership recognized a gap between highly specialized Ph.D.s and the growing demand from businesses to translate research into real-world applications. A&S’ partnership with Harvey Mudd resulted in recommendations that bridged this divide through establishment of a new terminal degree—now known as the Master of Biotech Management—and founding of the Keck Graduate School, the seventh member of the Claremont Consortium.

A&S began evolving our engagements beyond empirically informed strategy to focus on higher, broader levels of institutional strategy—positioning and strategy primarily influencing marketing, communications, student recruitment, and financial aid.

Continued evolution of A&S’ attitudinal research-based predictive modeling techniques developed into the first generation of a new proprietary methodology, Simulated Decision Modeling (SDM).

By this time, SDM was driving strategy recommendations for colleges from Saint Anselm to Hendrix, with the latter culminating in the development of the widely regarded Odyssey Program, a transformative experiential approach to liberal arts education that revolutionized Hendrix’s enrollment and financial positioning.

A&S’ partnership with Virginia Tech showcased the power of SDM in guiding high-level strategic decisions—this time, at the state level. Our SDM study on positioning, pricing, and aid provided VT with the empirical evidence needed to negotiate greater tuition-setting autonomy with the Commonwealth. These negotiations ultimately led to the Restructuring Act granting Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and William & Mary increased independence in exchange for accountability in key enrollment areas such as socioeconomic status, race, and geographic diversity.

With the college football selection system under scrutiny, the Bowl Championship Series (now the College Football Playoff) turned to A&S for its expertise in rigorous, impartial research. Our analysis led to a more rational ranking system, ensuring fairer and more competitive matchups in future seasons.

As A&S continued its SDM studies with higher education institutions, it also deepened its support for independent schools through a seminal study with The Association of Boarding Schools. This comprehensive study examining students and alumni from boarding, private day, and public schools, provided empirical evidence of the lasting impact of a boarding school experience, and in doing so, debunked numerous myths surrounding boarding education.

A&S partnered with Spelman College, a leading institution among HBCUs, to support its mission and financial growth in response to increasing market demand. By applying SDM to institutional pricing and positioning strategy, Spelman was able to refine its approach, aligning enrollment, advancement, and strategic planning goals. This collaboration helped the college strengthen its institutional strategy, paving the way for a new era of growth and success.

Pricing strategy at public institutions is inherently complex, influenced by shifting state and federal funding and regulations—which led to A&S partnering with UT Arlington to navigate these challenges. Through a comprehensive pricing and positioning study, we helped the university strike the right balance between cost and financial aid while refining its positioning platform. This approach not only attracted the students UT Arlington most wanted to enroll but also ensured the institution met its net tuition and revenue goals.

By 2008, A&S was seamlessly integrating SDM-based market testing and consulting into the later stages of strategic planning at institutions such as Kalamazoo College. With strategic planning objectives already determined, our study with Kalamazoo identified strategic initiatives that would be most impactful in achieving those objectives and changing the behaviors of K’s key enrollment and advancement constituencies.

A&S’ collaboration with the University of Chicago played a pivotal role in elevating an extraordinary institution to its rightful place in the market. The study provided strategic recommendations to enhance the student experience and overcome perceptual barriers that limited appeal among top-performing students, while also bolstering alumni engagement. By implementing substantive changes in academics, student life, and facilities—alongside enhanced recruitment and communication efforts—Chicago doubled undergraduate applications in just three years. This not only improved application quality and yield against Ivy League institutions but also propelled the university from a top-10 to a top-5 ranking in U.S. News & World Report.

In collaboration with the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, A&S conducted a landmark study of university presidents overseeing major Division I athletic programs. The findings revealed widespread concerns about the financial sustainability and institutional impact of intercollegiate athletics at football bowl-eligible universities, highlighting the need for higher education leaders to address these pressing issues.

Grinnell College partnered with A&S to integrate market inputs into its strategic planning process. Imputed Importance helped identify perceptual obstacles the institution was facing, and SDM identified strategic thrusts that would strengthen the College’s ability to attract high-achieving students and secure philanthropic support. Findings directly shaped Grinnell’s long-term positioning and strategic direction.

A&S led groundbreaking research on evolving trends in philanthropic behavior in higher education. Working with Bryn Mawr, Davidson, Haverford, and Kenyon, A&S harnessed the predictive power of SDM and other techniques to illuminate contemporary factors influencing the giving decisions of their alumni and emerging major-gift prospects and to uncover donors’ receptivity to selected potential shifts in their advancement strategies.

As the COVID-19 pandemic upended higher education worldwide, A&S conducted a studentPOLL study to assess its immediate impact on students' college decisions for fall 2020. The findings helped institutions anticipate and respond to significant enrollment challenges during an unprecedented time.

In response to the urgent, high-stakes decisions brought on by the pandemic, A&S adapted its powerful SDM methodologies—originally designed for long-term strategy—to address immediate institutional needs. Working closely with individual colleges and universities, A&S deployed rapid SDM studies to inform immediate, high-stakes tactical decision-making, and inform COVID policies from pricing strategies to campus depopulation effort. These insights helped institutions mitigate risks while maintaining enrollment and retention during a period of extraordinary uncertainty.

Breaking new ground, A&S applied SDM to predict the impact of strategic initiatives on college students’ persistence through graduation. While we had long used Imputed Importance and other techniques to analyze student satisfaction and retention, identifying challenges alone did not always reveal the most effective solutions. With SDM, institutions could now implement data-driven strategies with confidence, improving student persistence and graduation rates through targeted, actionable insights.

Art & Science Group proudly marks three decades of advancing institutional strategy, celebrating with colleagues, past and present, as well as family and friends.

A&S remains steadfast in its commitment to expanding educational access as a fundamental social good. Through partnerships with colleges, universities, independent schools, and non-profits, we continue our efforts to effectively fulfill their missions and ambitions through the development of empirically-informed institutional strategy.