Rethinking the Admissions Process

[Vinnie Vrotny]

[cross posted on my blog, Multi-faceted Refractions]

As an administrator at an Independent School, I realize that there are processes which allows us to attract new students to our campus. Over the past few evenings, I have been processing the information that I have collect during my conversations about Internet Safety that I do for all of our students, from fourth grade through twelfth grade. Here are a few informal responses that I have gotten back from our students, from 6th - 12th grades:

1. For most of them, the mobile phone is used more for sending text messages than talking

2. Most of the students (over 80%) have visited YouTube in the past month

3. 50% of our 7th Graders have a social network account (Facebook or MySpace), 75% of our 8th Graders, and the number increases when we get to the high school to the point that nearly all seniors are participating in these networks

I am not surprised by these replies, as I am the father of two girls, who are within this demographic.

So I wonder, are there new ways beyond the current processes that we currently use to create a buzz for school aimed at prospective students? Could we:

1. Create a networking messaging account on a service such as Twitter, Plurk, or the like. We could then update it with news and announcements about what is going on at North Shore, to create a desire to want to come here. Prospective students would be able to access these via their computer or via SMS (text messaging) depending on how they choose to access the information.

2. Create a YouTube channel and put short marketing videos that students may find. When they go to search North Shore, they will get content driven by us, rather than just the drivel that some of our students have created. We could create short, 2-3 minute videos which highlight various activities, homecoming, the plays, choral concerts, exciting classroom projects and present them in quick burst on a site where students are already drawn. We could engage a students to produce these videos.

3. We could use students to act as social networking/digital ambassadors, the same way that we use them as guides for prospective students shadow day, to keep in contact and follow up to ask more questions. These students would use the existing social networks to reach out to prospective students, making them want to come to such a "hip" and together school.

These are just a few of my thoughts. I am hopeful that this will spur further discussion and conversation.

[Ben Chant]

A year on--How do you see the digital landscape now? At Berkeley Carroll we're determinedly moving our admissions materials online and we're wondering about how much (if any) print is needed. We also want to work on our digital footprint, wondering where to draw the line in controlling it. I love MIT's DIY homepage, but clearly some information should be static, some should be user generated (Vinnie's second solution above) and, as we move in ripples of information away from the website, it's going to remain authentic, but not necessarily "approved".

One question is-do you know schools that have made a similar shift successfully?

[Chris]

In fact, most research these days suggests that when it comes to school decisions (and often other consumer decisions as well), teenage children in families drive the bus. For that matter, increasingly, tweenage children help make big family decisions as well. One article I read over a year ago said that market research in cars, for instance, suggests that if the children in a family do not like a particular car, mom and dad will be significantly less likely to buy it. And these are only cars!

In my own experience, I have had countless parents over the years tell me, "You're our number one choice!" only to have their children choose another school. Parents seem (rightly so, in my opinion) averse to forcing their idea of "the right school" on their kids. When I was young, my parents forced me to attend the private school that my brother attended, in spite of my protests for the next four years. I had a fairly miserable time and I have absolutely no sense of "belonging" to that school as a result. Surely this is not the result we want for students we matriculate?

Thus, I find myself agreeing with Vinnie's assessment. I think we in admissions need to become more sophisticated in our thinking and to be unafraid to employ current trends in marketing. Though the idea of "marketing to students" may sound crass to some, I see it simply as employing the most useful tools for the job. Years ago, would anyone have said, "I don't want to use phones in admissions"? Or would any of us now say, "My school doesn't need a website"? The point is simply that we want ALL those - younger and older - involved in the school selection process to have as informed and correct an opinion about us as possible. And the fact is, kids today are much more savvy than we often give them credit for - I say this not only as a 10-year veteran of middle-school teaching, but also as a parent of a teenager. They know what they want and can be very articulate in expressing what they want.

This said, I want to respond to Demetri's point about how kids and parents come to schools. Yes, it may be that kids tell parents "I'd like to go look at School X," and parents will likely have their own schools they put on the search list. Parents hear about local schools from their friends who have children; kids also hear about schools from their friends. Thus, while it is important to tap the parent community in getting good word of mouth out there, it is equally important to tap our student community to spread some buzz about us, and the way kids spread buzz these days is electronically. Kids need to sense that the social world at a school will be accepting of them; they do by checking things out on Facebook, looking things up on Google and Wikipedia, having IM "conversations" about things at AOLonline, Twittering (though this is more the purview of older teens at the moment), and texting. If kids learn through immersion in these worlds that they can already have a friend at the school when they arrive, so much the better. But we should be under no illusion: if a child does not want to attend a school that mom and dad like, chances are better than 75% that the child will not attend that school.

[Demetri Orlando]

cool ideas! but isn't it more the parents who we want to reach, at least in terms of marketing for admissions? I guess there may be some scenarios where the child might find out about a school and suggest it to his/her parents to explore. As time goes by, (and I get older) it seems like the parents are getting younger :) and will eventually be more "native" to these communications tools. I want to think about how to leverage these tools with parents