A college-admissions officer might someday set up a video conference with a group of students from across the country, or check the live Web cam on the school's Web site. They'll perhaps check an independent recruitment site for new prospects, searching for students with a grade point average of 3.0 who play a musical instrument and like volleyball. Or, they might spend time putting the finishing touches on a multi-media show for a sleepover visit for seventh graders.
These are all scenarios in the future–but the not-to-distant future. In fact, at some schools, they are already happening. In order to cut recruiting expenses, reach the precise kind of students they are after and contact students on their own turf, the Internet, schools are increasingly turning to high-tech solutions.
In 1995, no college had a Web site. Now they all do, says Frank Burtnett, president of Education Now, a consulting firm in Springfield, Va., that advises colleges about recruitment. That's because more than 90 percent of high school students surveyed in a recent study use the Internet, and 15 percent said they used the Web as their main source of information in their college search.
The Internet as a resource was only topped by guidance counselors, who 20 percent of those surveyed said they used. "This is an entirely different type of student, and a new approach to recruiting them," Burtnett says. "It's a different world."
According to Herb Ellis, director of undergraduate admissions at University of North Carolina, the biggest change in recruitment is that colleges are making a bigger effort to contact prospective students more often and more personally. "I don't know if it is really new or different than what we've been doing since the beginning of time," Ellis says. "There just are new tools. We're trying to reach out to students, but with a more personal touch: more letters, e-mails and visits."
Ellis notes that new technology allows students to get more information and apply to more colleges, but it also lets schools more easily contact the students they want or who are likely to be interested in their college. "At one time, you looked at recruitment in terms of contacting students across the board like scattering seeds," Ellis says. "Now you look at specific students who are interested in science or drama or a merit program or who are likely to choose your school."
Colleges are able to seek out students they want to contact by region, test score or interest, for instance, through services such as one provided by The College Board, the company responsible for the PSAT and SATs. The College Board collects data from test registrants, then will search the database for students meeting the qualifications a school has selected.
Another vehicle for making the connection between students and colleges are a growing number of sites, such as CollegeRecruiting.com, a sort of marketplace for colleges and students to find each other. Students can enter information about themselves: their school, grade point average, extracurricular activities and interests. Even whether they’d like to go to a school in an urban or rural setting. They can customize their profile with information such as special projects in which they’ve been involved.
For example, a student interested in music could offer a sound bite of a performance and an artist could attach a piece of work, according to Ken Okrepkie, vice president for high school relations for the company. "If a cellist wants to find the best schools for music, we can do that. If a football player wants to know about the best sports programs, he can find it here too," Okrepkie says.
The profile allows CollegeRecruiting.com to search for college matches for the student, but also provides data so that colleges and recruiters can track them down. The universities can search the site for the type of students they want or who they feel would be interested in their college. Okrepkie says 4,000 colleges are in its database as are a growing number of students. He said guidance counselors, many of whom were at first skeptical, are increasingly turning to sites that offer this type of service to students.
"We aren't trying to replace what happens in the guidance office and the admissions office," Okrepkie says. "We're trying to provide a way to foster communications between the students and the schools."
Ellis says that searching by both students and schools will increasingly become the norm as students become more sophisticated in their understanding of new technologies and narrow their interests. (Narrowing your interests, by the way, doesn't mean that you have to limit them to one. And you can surely change your mind later.)
"We have to tailor our efforts to the right students, says Ellis. "Otherwise, we are wasting a lot of time and money and we aren’t getting the complete message out to the students who are likely to attend and would likely succeed."
The likelihood that a student will succeed at a school is something that colleges increasingly review. "These schools are no longer just searching for next year's freshman class. They are looking for the students who will graduate in four years," says Burtnett. He notes that colleges today have the luxury of being in a "buyer's market."
The number of students graduating from high school is at its highest level in 20 years. With the high numbers of students graduating and hoping to attend college, schools can ease up on general recruiting and instead target specific students. "Higher education is looking at this as sort of a feast," Burtnett says. What's in the future, considering the numbers of students involved? Tools such as recruiting Web sites that allow students and colleges to do specific searches are likely to become dominant forces.
Experts say there will be an increasing use of the Web, with sites offering extensive virtual tours or Web cams, profiles about and chats with enrolled students and other features that give students a college experience. Burtnett notes that at least one graduate school has put its complete catalogue on the Internet, eliminating its printed view book. Other schools may eventually follow suit. "They are also tossing out their videos in favor of the Internet," he says.
Burtnett says the process of selecting a college will also begin earlier. He says the traditional process that includes students becoming aware of schools, experiencing them and then making a decision all in the last two years of high school will give way to a process that starts in middle school. College visits will be offered to younger students, and open houses and student visits will focus on a certain type of student with certain interests. They'll offer more opportunities for prospective students to absorb that school's atmosphere.
"We've learned that we want to find the right student who believes that our school is right for them," says Ellis.
