An analysis was made of characteristics of students participating in the various types and numbers of institutional contacts before enrolling in college. The purpose was to examine the relationship of student pre-enrollment contacts with the university to student enrollment and retention. Records identifying potential 1980 entering freshmen having participated in a form of contact with the University of Iowa were obtained for each of 21 forms of contact (high school visit, campus visit, forwarding test scores, mail inquiry, etc.). This information was matched with registrar's information regarding application and enrollment, American College Testing (ACT) program scores, and ACT Profile information, resulting in a data set containing 13,066 cases. Findings include the relationship between number of contacts and eventual application and enrollment, characteristics of those contacted through the various activities, and the relationship of the number and types of contacts and eventual application and enrollment to retention of students through the freshman year at the university. Some of the specific findings were: the proportion of students applying and enrolling increased with the number of pre-enrollment contacts; ACT composite scores, college grade point average, expected level of education, expected grade point average, total musical activity, and planned and previous extracurricular involvement were positively related to the number of contacts; and a hypothesis of differential freshman year persistence behaviors for those contacted and those not contacted was not supported. (Author/LBJ)