Many small colleges have built something genuinely effective in their athletic programs: a recruitment system that consistently brings in students who would never have considered the institution otherwise. Coaches identify prospects early, build personal relationships, articulate a compelling and concrete value proposition, and deliver students into a community that is ready and waiting for them on day one.

That system works. Research on athletic recruiting shows that student-athletes make enrollment decisions based not just on athletics or finances, but on relational and identity factors — feeling wanted, feeling like they belong, and having a clear sense of who they’ll be when they arrive.

The question for presidents at small colleges isn’t whether that system works. It’s whether the same principles can be applied to recruit students who will never play a sport.

For most institutions, the answer is yes. And the honors program is the most underutilized vehicle for doing it.

Why Athletic Recruiting Works

Before translating the model, it’s worth being specific about what makes it effective. Five mechanics are at work.

The institution comes to the student. Athletic recruiting is proactive. Coaches identify prospects, initiate contact, and pursue them — often before the student has begun a formal college search. The student doesn’t find the college; the college finds them.

Identity is conferred before enrollment. From the first contact, the student knows who they will be on campus. Not just “a student at a small college” — a point guard, a starting pitcher, a member of a team. That identity is specific, meaningful, and portable. It travels with them through the decision process.

The value proposition is concrete. Playing time, scholarship opportunity, competitive level, facilities — these are specific and comparable. A student can evaluate them against offers from other institutions. Vagueness doesn’t survive recruiting; clarity wins.

A trusted person advocates for them. The coach isn’t a brochure. They’re a human being who has watched film, knows the student’s name, and communicates genuine interest. That relationship is a primary driver of enrollment decisions. Studies show that fit with the coach — not just athletic fit, but relational fit — is among the strongest predictors of where a student-athlete ultimately enrolls.

A community is waiting. Before the student arrives, they know their teammates. They’ve visited, practiced, bonded. On move-in day, they aren’t starting from zero. They walk into a ready-made social structure.

Most non-athlete recruitment has none of this. It is passive, generic, late, and identity-neutral. Students find institutions through search services, fill out inquiry cards, and receive the same communications as everyone else. There is no coach equivalent. There is no team waiting.

The Honors Program Opportunity

An honors program, built and operated correctly, can replicate all five mechanics for a specific and valuable population: academically motivated, high-achieving students who are exploring their options and who might not otherwise put a small college on their list.

These students are being actively recruited by larger institutions with stronger name recognition. To win them — or even earn consideration — a small college has to come to them, confer identity, articulate a concrete value proposition, provide a human advocate, and deliver a community.

Most honors programs do none of this. They exist as transcript designations, course sequences, or GPA thresholds. They are academic credentials, not enrollment tools. Students stumble onto them in the course catalog rather than being recruited into them.

That’s a significant missed opportunity — but it’s also a correctable one.

Building an Honors Program That Recruits

Come to the student. Honors recruitment should be proactive and personal. Identify high-achieving prospects in your pipeline and reach out to them specifically about the honors program — not as part of a mass communication, but as a targeted invitation. The message matters: we identified you, we think you’d be a strong fit, and we want you to know this opportunity exists specifically for people like you.

Confer identity early. The student should know who they’ll be before they arrive. Not just a student — an honors scholar, part of a selective cohort, someone whose intellectual ambition is recognized and valued by the institution. That identity needs to be communicated clearly and early, and reinforced throughout the recruitment process.

Make the value proposition concrete. What does honors status actually get a student? Priority registration, dedicated faculty mentorship, research opportunities, scholarship eligibility, a distinctive credential for graduate school applications? The answer has to be specific and compelling. Vague descriptions of “enriched academic experiences” don’t close decisions. Concrete benefits do.

Provide a human advocate. Someone on staff needs to own honors recruitment the way a coach owns athletic recruiting. This person knows the prospective students by name, builds relationships with them, communicates genuine interest, and walks them through the decision. An honors director who only interacts with enrolled students is not doing enrollment work.

Deliver a community. This is where most honors programs fall short — and it’s the hardest piece to build. We’ll return to it below.

The Community Problem

Athletic community doesn’t come from welcome receptions and end-of-year banquets. It comes from shared struggle and shared experience — practice, travel, the pressure of competition, winning and losing together. The community is a byproduct of doing something hard in close proximity over time.

Most honors programs try to manufacture community through programming. The result is a collection of high-achieving students who share a transcript notation but don’t share an experience.

The principle that needs to guide honors program design is this: build for shared struggle, not just shared space.

That means cohort-based coursework that students move through together — genuinely challenging, not just harder versions of existing courses. It means intellectual work with public stakes: a symposium, a competition, a research project with a real audience. It means travel with purpose, whether to academic conferences, community engagement, or other experiences that create the bonds that come from being somewhere unfamiliar together. It means traditions and rituals that build longitudinal identity — induction ceremonies, alumni connections, a sense that the cohort has a history worth joining.

The specific forms these experiences take will differ by institution. What matters is the underlying design logic: students need to do something hard together, not just sit near each other.

If You Already Have an Honors Program

Many small colleges have honors programs that were built for academic purposes — to challenge strong students, satisfy accreditors, or signal institutional quality. Those are legitimate goals. But if the program isn’t doing enrollment work, it’s operating below its potential.

The diagnostic question for presidents is not do we have an honors program? It’s is our honors program recruiting for us?

Ask whether prospective students are being proactively identified and contacted about the program. Ask whether there is a person responsible for honors recruitment the way a coach is responsible for athletic recruiting. Ask whether the program delivers a concrete, differentiated value proposition that a student could compare across institutions. Ask whether enrolled honors students describe a genuine community — or just a GPA requirement.

If the answers are unsatisfying, the program likely needs to be rebuilt with enrollment strategy, not just academic affairs, at the table.

A Presidential Decision

This is worth naming directly: an honors program that functions as an enrollment tool is not an academic affairs project. It is a strategic investment that requires presidential attention and cross-functional coordination between enrollment, academic affairs, and student life.

The institutions that get this right don’t treat honors programs as a perk for strong students. They treat them as a recruitment system — one that reaches a population of high-achieving, non-athlete students who are worth pursuing, and gives those students a compelling reason to choose a college they might otherwise have passed over.

That’s exactly what athletic recruiting does. There’s no reason it should be the only system at the institution that works that way.

Sources and other resources

Al-Fattal, A., Walker, E. G., II, & Gust, A. M. (2025). From recruitment to enrollment: Understanding student-athletes' college choice decisions. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 7, 1652581. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2025.1652581

Czekanski, W. A., & Barnhill, C. R. (2015). Recruiting the student-athlete: An examination of the college decision process. Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletes in Education, 9(3), 133–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/19357397.2015.1122999

Magnusen, M. J., Kim, Y., Perrewé, P. L., & Ferris, G. R. (2014). A critical review and synthesis of student-athlete college choice factors: Recruiting effectiveness in NCAA sports. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 9(6), 1265–1286. https://doi.org/10.1260/1747-9541.9.6.1265