Thanks to Tom Williams for this! Tom sat in on a student panel at KASCAC this morning, and tweeted these insights about their college searching experience:
- An overnight with a student is huge. Students don’t want to hear the canned stuff.
- Students are thinking about college as early as 6th grade. College tours as sophomores.
- Don’t set up a table at a high school. This passive recruiting is not effective. Assemblies are more effective.
- Word of mouth is very important in choosing a college.
- Choose your tour guides carefully. Coach and train. A bad college tour experience can cost you students!
- Don’t over-call your prospective students. Don’t be a college stalker.
- Students are looking for campuses that are multicultural.
There is so much we can learn from this, whether we can control it or not. I completely agree about the “table” thing — I have more thoughts on that, and I’ll post those later — and on the tour guides, as I posted a few days ago. The “college stalker” comment was funny also.
The great equalizer, though… how can you control word of mouth?