admissions and student recruitment – Page 2

For student recruitment, rankings still matter

Here’s some disturbing news for those of us who wish college rankings would just go away:

According to recently publicized results of a poll of prospective college students, the rankings of college and university programs by media outlets like U.S. News & World Report continue to have a significant impact on the college search process.

The consulting firm Art & Science Group, conducted an online survey with 846 college-bound high school seniors in November and December 2012. Here’s what they found:

Two-thirds of students surveyed indicated that they had taken college rankings into account in their college application decisions.
Students with the highest SAT scores (1300 or higher) were more likely to have considered the rankings in their application decisions than students with SAT scores of less than 1300.
Nearly two-thirds of students surveyed “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” that the rankings are “very important in trying to sort out the differences between colleges.”
About two-thirds, respectively, somewhat or strongly disagreed that the rankings “don’t matter” and that they “don’t matter to me, but they matter to my parents.”

So, yes, the rankings remain relevant. And with the proliferation of new ranking organizations out there, and the White House’s push to have a grading system for higher education, these types of numbers games will continue in a variety of forms. Just in the past year, we’ve seen the rise of many “ROI” (return on investment) rankings, like this one. Look for this trend to continue. Since U.S. News owns the reputational ranking category, other groups, from publications like Forbes and Washington Monthly to salary-information services like PayScale, will focus on ranking schools by ROI or affordability.

Beyond the rankings

But the Art & Science Group folks suggest other factors may play an even greater role in students’ decisions on picking a college. Things like “substantive and atmospheric insights and information from the campus visit, interactions with parents, information on the web and in print materials, and more personal forms of contact with prospective students … can have a greater influence than rankings.”

Furthermore, “we would argue against spending too much institutional time, money, and energy on hand wringing over rank per se and on attempts to improve it. For most institutions, it would be far better to focus on planning strategy that strengthens an institution’s competitive position on a substantive basis: differentiation based on educational approach, student experience, innovative teaching, and the like.”

In other words, your time is better spent developing and refining your institution’s brand persona and messaging, and developing ways to deliver that messaging to your prospective students.

The New York Times’ ‘Choice’ cut

The New York Times is shutting down its college admissions blog, The Choice

On Friday, I learned via Twitter — specifically from Charlie Melichar (@melicharlie) — that the New York Times was discontinuing its admissions blog, “The Choice,” after a four-year run. I guess it was time for the blog to graduate.

I first discovered the choice back in 2010 — the blog’s sophomore year, I guess — and at the time I likened it to “a reality show for blogosphere wonks.”

While there is a little bit of a Real World feel to the six students’ posts, it does provide a look into how high school students (and their families) deal with rejection — a lesson better learned sooner than later. Some, like Anne Paik of L.A., puts on a brave front (“I will not let myself dissolve into a miserable puddle of self-pity,” she writes) but admits that “Underneath this cheerful bravado of sunshine and happy-go-lucky attitude, I’m really hurt and disappointed.”

Beyond my initial curiosity about the project, I never followed the blog religiously. Then again, I’m also not a fan of angst-ridden reality TV. (Unless you consider “Duck Dynasty” to be angst-ridden.)

But some of my higher ed counterparts apparently found value in “The Choice.” On Twitter, admissions counselor Chip Timmons (@chipster) called the blog a “Good source of content for admissions folks.” And judging from the comments the Times‘ announcement provoked (42 at the time of this posting), many readers are upset.

Anyway, good luck to the students who made the choice to share their thoughts about the college admissions process on this blog over the past four years. And good luck to the former readers of “The Choice” who now must look elsewhere for guidance.

Friday Five: Twitter favorites

Time to do some fall cleaning of my Twitter favorites folder. (Warning: None of these have anything to do with Thursday’s big Facebook changes.)

1. Six must-read manifestos to get you unstuck, all from Change This. I’ve read the first one (Hugh Macleod’s How To Be Creative) and the last one (Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start) but have saved this to read them again — and to take a first read of the four sandwiched in between.

2. 12 ways to let people know they matter. Good tips on how not to be a schmuck.

3. 12 content marketing predictions for 2012. 2012 predictions? Already?

4. The best college admissions Twitter accounts you aren’t following.

5. Jedi Kittens. Sixteen seconds of video bliss to end your week, and this post.

Friday Five: Picks of the week

Five good, quick reads from around the web this week:

1. Recruitment lessons from the E-Expectations report: Kyle James of .eduGuru breaks down Noel-Levitz’s annual report on how prospective students and their parents use the web and social media. A great summary.

2. Managing information overload: Six good tips from CKSyme.org.

3. Building a social media users’ guide: It’s a question of trust: Good insight from Tim Nekritz about his experience.

4. Embrace the silence: Peter Shankman on knowing when to shut the heck up.

5. The 12 habits of highly connective people: Terrific post from Conversation Agent, with a bonus video of Anil Dash talking about making connections.

Friday Five: Advice for #highered bloggers

In part 1 and part 2 of this series about the value of blogs for higher ed institutions, we attempted to answer the question: Why should colleges or universities blog?

I enlisted the help of some of the best higher ed blogging experts around for the answers, and if their responses did not convince you of the value of blogging for your institution, then you probably don’t need to read any further. Because today’s post, the final of this series, offers some advice for newbie bloggers.

Once again, we turned to our panel of experts and asked:

What one piece of advice would you offer to someone who is thinking about creating a blog on behalf of his or her institution?

Here are their answers:

Blogging is work. Yes, it’s cool to set up a blog, select the initial photographs and play around with different designs but a blog is only as good as the information posted to it. Creating this content takes work; developing an audience takes time.

Put in the work and the audience will come.

— Patrick Powers, interactive media manager for Webster University.

* * *

Just like any communications or social media project, make sure you know why you’re doing it and how it fits into your bigger communications strategy. Don’t just start a blog because your competitors are doing one or because it sounds trendy (because they aren’t). The time commitment is significant and long-term, so think carefully before jumping in.

— Davina Gould, director of publications and online communications for Stetson University College of Law.

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Before starting a blog, have a plan. Not just a plan for what your blog will look like or “how often” it will be updated. Who do you want to read your blog? What will you say to them? Who will say it? Be sure that you have something valuable to contribute.

— Alaina Wiens, new media communications specialist for the University of Michigan-Flint and a contributor to UM-Flint’s University Relations blog.

* * *

Be fearless, and make sure it is part of the plan from the start that messages should not be filtered through the “institutional voice.” It’s okay to go off topic, and even talk about the bad once in a while. Just be natural, be open, and be you. Blogs are first and foremost a community building tool, not a marketing tool, so don’t let it get colored that way.

— Michael Fienen, director of web marketing for Pittsburg State University and a .eduGuru contributor.

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Keep your blog authentic and personal: individual voice(s), not official, institution-speak.

— Michael Stoner, president of mStoner Inc.

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Brainstorm content first and then decide how frequently you want to post updates. New content ideas will inevitably pop into your head as you go, but having a list to fall back on or to work off of will help you immensely. If you start off blogging by posting every other day, because you are enthusiastic about the new project or you have a lot of initial topic ideas, you are setting the bar pretty high. It is better to blog once a week consistently versus anything that is inconsistent. You can always decide in the future to post more frequently once you’ve gotten a good handle on blogging in general.

— Mallory Wood, assistant director of marketing for Saint Michael’s College.

* * *

You don’t pre-approve blog posts, you pre-approve bloggers. Find responsible students doing cool things or from interesting programs, give them directions and expectations and provide tools to help them succeed. Is that more than one piece of advice?

— Tim Nekritz, associate director of public affairs and director of web communication at SUNY Oswego.

* * *

Set goals and be consistent. No one will follow a blog that posts erratically. Stay on message and deliver regular posts. I’ve given my student admission bloggers a topic sheet of about 50 ideas to pull from, and require that posts go up at least 2-3 times a week.

Also, promote your blog! It won’t be a success if it’s sitting buried in a link on your website. Send postcards driving your audience to it. Develop a fun campaign around QR codes – just do something to get people to read your blogs and share the posts to their friends. Once you get the interest started, it will surprise you how quickly it spreads.

— Mike Petroff, web manager for enrollment management at Emerson College and a .eduGuru blogger.

* * *

Plan, plan, plan. Think it through. Why do you need a blog? What do you want it to accomplish? Who is it for? Who will maintain it? How often will you publish? What kind of content will you publish? How will you promote your blog posts through other channels and integrate your blog into your broader communication strategy? How do you define success? How will you measure for that?

Georgy Cohen, manager of web content and strategy for Tufts University and co-creator of Meet Content.

* * *

Remember to have time and a strategy. Just because there are lots of random blogs cropping up in different departments on campus, doesn’t necessarily mean you need an overarching one. Understand the mission and reasoning by why you’re doing it. Once you’re deciding to do it, make sure that you cultivate the community because if you do it right, there will be a community that develops around it and people will come to rely on it. It then becomes an asset that you have to manage or it can be a liability.

— Ron Bronson, an instructor at Community College of Aurora (Colo.).

* * *

Start small. Track your stats. Don’t expect comments to magically appear. You will need to market your blog initially as folks will not necessarily find it. However, most blogging platforms are exceptionally optimized for search engines which is a huge plus. Seek out your social media champions on campus. Blogging is a skill. Find folks who have experience with writing for the web and/or creating engaging content. Be brave, be bold…blogs are fantastic for content delivery, communications enhancement, and community-building.

— Eric Stoller, higher ed consultant and student affairs and technology blogger for InsideHigherEd.com.

* * *

Keep it simple. Often the rules about publishing web content are already covered in the acceptable use of technology policy, having a separate blogging policy may be overkill.

Find a few very interested or active faculty members to “seed” the blogging at your institution. Let them be a model and guide the participation by others before you open it up to the entire campus. Having a lot of junk out there in the beginning will only lead to status quo as junk.

Training, training, training. Make sure you hold regularly scheduled training sessions on not only how to use the blogging platform you choose but also on good blogging techniques. How to link to articles appropriately, how to optimize images, getting the most out of categories and tags and most important of all how to detect and eliminate spam from your entries.

It might scare people a lot but I recommend letting comments go up automatically and then having the blog author take them down if they are not appropriate. This allows for faster pace discussion and doesn’t keep comments in someones inbox for weeks. A few spam may fall through the cracks but having a global rss feed of all comments and the web communications department scanning it daily can help detect hot posts and inappropriate comments.

— Nick Denardis, associate director of web communications at Wayne State University and an .eduGuru contributor.

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Do your homework. Look at other blogs, read about how to blog, read about content strategy, read, read, ask successful bloggers for tips, have a good strategy in place before you start. You may have something to say, but is their an audience for it? Do you have something of value to add? Do you read other people’s blogs? Do you comment regularly? Do your homework and then make a commitment to be present with your audience.

Chris Syme, former director of new media for Montana State University athletics.

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Pick the right platform and link your blog to your other social media platforms.

— Karine Joly, creator of Higher Ed Experts.

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That wraps up this three-part series on why blogging for colleges and universities. But if you haven’t gotten enough practical advice from this post, check out Karine Joly’s Blogging Boot Camp presentation.