Will I Fit At Your School?
“Oh, you’ve done a great job of recruiting me. I can’t think of anything you could have offered or done differently. It’s just that I felt like I fit better at the other college…and not at yours.”
Admittedly, recruiting students is largely an exercise in matchmaking. And while no recruiter worth her/his salt wants to woo a prospect if the match between school and student isn’t a mutually beneficial one, losing a student to a competing college or university on the basis of something as non-specific as “fit” is about as frustrating as it gets.
In this installment of TeensTALK® Tids & Bits, I want to share some interesting and prescriptive findings from our most recent TeensTALK® study regarding the notion of “fit.”
Last Spring we asked traditional-aged prospective undergraduates (high school seniors) across the country to tell us how they were trying to determine if they would fit at the colleges and universities they were considering. Specifically, we wanted to try to better understand how they were assessing “fit potential” based on (1) their campus visit experiences, (2) the features offered by each school, and (3) emotional and intuitive indicators. Here are the highlights from the first of those three categories (watch this blog for future installments on features and emotional/intuitive indicators)…
Determining Fit By Visiting the Campus
Topping the list of activities or characteristics of a campus visit that were most helpful in determining if a college is a good fit is having a campus tour guide who is excited and knowledgeable about the college. On a 5-point scale, this scored a whopping 4.3; 48% of respondents identified it as “very helpful.” Following in a close second-place finish is having the college personalize a tour to my interests, and knowing a little bit about me at 4.2 on the 5-point scale; 50% of respondents identified this as “very helpful” in determining fit.
Meeting with a professor scored a 4.2, and both attending a class in session and meeting with an admission counselor scored 4.1 on the 5-point scale. Interestingly, only 37% of respondents identified a meeting with an admission counselor as being very helpful, while meeting a professor and attending a class in session were identified by 45% of respondents as being very helpful.
Of all the activities, characteristics, features, and indicators tested, only ONE scored as more helpful than having a campus tour guide who is excited and knowledgeable about the college or having the college personalize a tour to my interests, and knowing a little bit about me. Fully 54% of college-bound students told us picturing myself attending and enjoying classes in my major is one of the best indicators of fit.
Prescription
Once again, the take-aways from this market research are clear: a prospective student relies heavily on her campus visit experience to assess the level of fit she would likely experience as an enrolled student. Specifically, she pays greatest attention to the demeanor and preparedness of her tour guide. And she is very favorably impressed by admission offices that go the extra mile to personalize the visit experience by building a schedule that reflects the student’s interests.
If you’re still offering a one-size-fits-all campus visit experience with no opportunity for prospective students to picture themselves attending and enjoying classes in their specific majors, it’s safe to say you’re compromising the success of your overall recruitment program. Further, if your visitors are spending more time with your recruiters than they are spending with charismatic faculty and enthusiastic, well-trained students, you’re effectively stacking the deck against you.
The moral of this story is a variation on the old Golden Rule: treat your campus visitors to the kind of customized, personalized, energized , informed experience that you would find relevant, memorable, and worth telling people about…and your enrollments could reflect an uptick as soon as next semester.
Photo by: websteria
