Colleges are woefully out of sync with students and their families in understanding what’s important to them and how to communicate with them. That’s the key message from a study of collegebound high-school seniors that I recently conducted. The good news is that colleges can do something about it before it’s too late.
The study, published by Zinch.com, a college-admissions portal that allows students and colleges to post information and interact, was based on a survey of a representative sample of 1,100 high-school seniors. I conducted it after hearing two presentations. The first was by Edward Fiske, a former education editor at The New York Times and author of the Fiske Guide to Colleges, who gave insights into the admissions process. He spoke about the problems inherent in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and the public’s reliance upon them. He said parents use the rankings to ask, “What’s the best college?” when they should be asking, “What’s the best college for my child?” He also described how the rankings rely on the wrong inputs—those that basically measure institutional wealth—which does a disservice to public colleges.
The second presentation was by Anne Dwane, chief executive officer of Zinch.com, who cited findings by the consulting firm Noel-Levitz and the National Association for College Admission Counseling that it costs four-year public colleges more than $400 to secure an applicant, and four-year private colleges more than $2,000.
Juxtaposing the effect of the rankings with the enormous cost for colleges to recruit applicants was a wake-up call. I realized that even after years of publishing information about admissions, I didn’t know enough about the real dynamics of student-parent decision making. Although previous reports have usually focused on interviews with admissions professionals and high-school counselors, precious few have asked students themselves for their views. And I suspected that institutions didn’t know much more than I did. Fortunately, I was able to conduct a survey through Zinch’s network and secured responses from a random sample of high-school seniors who had completed the admissions process and made college choices.
What could students tell us that wasn’t obvious or trivial? Plenty, it turned out—and their insights should change the way enrollment directors operate.
According to the survey, parents are by far the most influential people in the admissions process—with no one even a close second. (Friends were a distant second, edging out high-school guidance counselors and far ahead of teachers or coaches.) The survey also found that the sticker price of a college was a significant factor for half of all families, with 21 percent saying cost was the determining factor about whether to apply. An institution’s brand name or “prestige factor” was important to about 45 percent of the parents and 35 percent of the students.
Most kids applied to a range of colleges, but only 36 percent included small colleges in their mix. That correlated with the 39 percent who said they focused their applications on colleges that offered mostly small classes.
About 41 percent of parents wanted their children to live at home or nearby during college. Only 6 percent of students wanted to live at home, but 25 percent of those whose parents wanted them at home also wanted to live at home. In the end, the majority—58 percent—of the students will attend colleges within about one or two hour’s drive of home. An additional 18 percent will attend college within a four-hour drive, and only 24 percent will be more than 250 miles away.
Visits to colleges were, by far, the most important factor in a student’s decision about where to apply. (A college’s own Web site was a not-too-distant second.) Visits of admissions officers to a student’s high school were not particularly influential, and college fairs barely made an impact.
How many colleges did students and their parents visit? Most students—70 percent—visited one to four institutions. Thirteen percent visited five to eight colleges, and 4 percent visited nine or more. Only 12 percent didn’t visit any institutions before applying. Most of the time, parents accompanied their children on such trips.
About 50 percent of students, before being accepted, visited the colleges they wound up attending, while 25 percent visited those institutions after acceptance but before their decision to matriculate.
When visiting colleges, students’ “gut reaction to the campus and the students” was the overwhelming influencer. Not surprisingly, the tour and the backward-walking tour guide were extremely important in the decision-making process. Far less important was the admissions officer’s presentation.
Those observations are merely highlights of a survey that’s still being analyzed for insights and ideas. (A copy of the full report is available by contacting survey@zinch.com.) We can, however, make some initial conclusions, which have important implications for college administrators:
Parents can be ignored only at an institution’s peril. Colleges spend considerable resources courting students—as they should. But given how influential parents are in the process, colleges should find cost-effective ways to communicate with them, too.
Campus visits make a difference. Students are substantially more successful in getting into their first-choice college if they visit the campus before applying. As many as 72 percent of those who visit will attend their first choice. When students don’t visit, parents are noticeably less influential, and guidance counselors more influential, in the search-and-application process.
Traditional tools work, but not that effectively. What are the least effective tools colleges use to attract students? Those that are the most expensive: direct mail and college fairs. So why continue relying on them? Because many enrollment administrators are understandably risk-averse and choose to avoid novel approaches.
So if I were in charge of enrollment management, what would I do? I recommend that colleges:
Communicate with parents. Snail mail is too costly for prospecting, so use e-mail and social-networking sites. The challenge, of course, is identifying parent-prospects. But more third-party organizations are figuring out how to connect with parents of the collegebound. Explaining why your college might be right for their children is just the beginning. The real opportunity is establishing a dialogue with parents and getting them and their kids to visit your campus.
Pay for students’ campus visits if they enroll. Most families visit fewer than four colleges. You want to make that cut. To encourage more families to visit—and to draw from a more diverse geographic pool—add an attractive incentive: a rebate of the cost of the visit if the student is admitted and decides to matriculate. Costly? Not compared with what private colleges are spending just to get an applicant.
Focus on tour guides. They are an institution’s most important salespeople, and most admissions offices train them. But how well do administrators know or influence what the student tour guides actually say? The best retailers use “secret shoppers” to gauge and improve quality. (Think Four Seasons Hotels or Nordstrom.) How many colleges seed the occasional tour with a “professional visitor” whose job it is to listen to the tour guide’s spiel and see whether he or she is connecting with the families? I can personally attest to the uneven quality of tour guides. My younger son recently ruled out a top private university because he couldn’t stand the tour guide and now happily attends that institution’s conference rival.
Give students a hook. Families typically take on the college tour with grand expectations and finish with glazed eyes and confused memories. What sets your campus apart from the three or four others the family is likely to experience that week? Is it the opportunity to sit in on a class? A minilecture by a star professor? A hands-on lab? Give families something memorable.
Offer high-school guidance counselors extra support. It’s no surprise that they are burdened by their workload. But their lack of knowledge of colleges outside their geographic comfort zone also frustrates many students. If you’re not bringing counselors to your campus for short visits and counseling workshops, you’re missing important relationship-building opportunities.
Use technology intelligently. How many of us parents can’t get our kids to listen to voice mail? We know that if we need their immediate attention—and a response—we have to text them. Colleges should use technology selectively and intelligently. Things “read” differently on the Web and through social-networking sites. Furthermore, one tool doesn’t cover all bases. Would your kids confuse Facebook with Blackboard? Not likely. Will they use Naviance the same way they use Zinch? Not a chance. The opportunity to use these new tools is changing every day, and enrollment-marketing efforts and expenditures must keep up.
Today, from my perspective both as the head of an online college-counseling service and as a parent who has gone through the admissions process three times in the past five years, I see dark clouds gathering over ivy-covered walls. Colleges are far more expensive; the competition for admission more intense; the stress levels greater; and the pressure on colleges to improve their brand rankings far from abating. If admissions offices don’t treat such trends as an opportunity to change, they risk devastating consequences. If they do—whether they accept my recommendations or try their own ideas—they will be far more likely to weather any storms.
