March 16, 2007 /Chronicle of Higher Education

Tangled Up in Tech

Admissions deans grapple with the promises and pitfalls of electronic recruiting

By ELIZABETH F. FARRELL

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Kenton B. Pauls, director of enrollment services at the University of North Dakota, knew that high-school students frequently send one another text messages, so last year he decided to incorporate text-messaging lingo into the viewbook the university sends to prospective students. Its cover had read, "You belong at the University of North Dakota." Mr. Pauls changed it to "U belong @ UND."

"I thought it would be an opportunity for us to get into the space of students," says Mr. Pauls. The younger members of his staff thought otherwise. "It looks stupid," they told him.

The staff members explained that the brochure looked outdated because many people no longer use shorthand language in their text messages. After all, most cellphones now have a feature that automatically spells out words.

In retrospect, Mr. Pauls says his innovation was a "bad call." This year the university once again printed the cover of its viewbook in plain English, though the text-messaging phrase still appears on the enrollment office's Web site.

Like Mr. Pauls, many admissions deans are racing to prove to prospective students that they are hip to the latest trends. They know that millions of teenagers log on to MySpace and Facebook every day and constantly use text messaging and instant messaging. Some officials assume they must use those channels to connect with teens — and to keep up with competitors.

So admissions offices at a small but growing number of colleges, including the University of South Carolina and San Francisco State University, have created online profiles on MySpace. At many other institutions, admissions deans are sending applicants text messages with deadline reminders, signing up for Instant Messenger to chat with them online, and hiring current students to write about their daily lives on blogs.

Colby College's admissions Web page includes links to podcasts created by students, collections of students' photographs of the campus, and a blog updated once a week by an admissions staffer.

"We're really trying to keep up with what's going on in the commercial world, because that's what the kids are exposed to," says Steve Thomas, director of admissions at Colby. "It's what they've come to expect in dealing with us."

Although that assumption is widespread, it may not be accurate. Despite the piles of market research on how teenagers communicate, there is scant evidence that a college gains any admissions edge with high-school students by reaching out to them through technology.

"Admissions people hear what one school is doing and just want to know, 'Can we do it too?'" says Scott Leamon, a senior interactive media designer at Stamats, a company that advises colleges on marketing. "They don't stop to think about whether or not it is useful for them or if it will give them any insight they couldn't get through traditional means."

Dabbling in new media can prove expensive and time-consuming. Those efforts can create more work for admissions officials without eliminating any of their old responsibilities, like answering telephones and mailing brochures.

But on some campuses that have avoided using new technology in admissions, officials worry that they are missing the boat.

So what should deans do? Some experts encourage admissions officials to rely on younger staff members and current students to create the content for high-tech admissions tools. Mr. Leamon and other admissions consultants say, however, that deans should venture cautiously into the ever-changing world of technology, where teens often regard adults as interlopers.

Forget Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is king among teenagers. According to Noel-Levitz, a higher-education consulting firm, about 25 percent of all colleges have added an instant-messenger feature that allows students to contact admissions officers with questions, and many more institutions are seriously considering offering it in the future.

This service may be unnecessary, however, because few students seem to be using it for college admissions questions. Although a recent report from Noel-Levitz found that 70 percent of 1,000 collegebound high-school students surveyed said they would like to use instant messenging to talk with a college representative, only 6 percent said they had done so.

Mark Amoroso, a senior at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, in Massachusetts, said he was content to send e-mail messages when he had questions for admissions officers, even though it usually took a day or two for someone from the college to respond. "My questions weren't emergencies or anything," says Mr. Amoroso. "It would be an amazing benefit if they were all on IM, but to expect that of every college is probably a little much."

And the same Noel-Levitz survey indicated that many high-school students wanted to interact in this medium only when they initiated contact with the college. While most colleges let students take the lead in instant messaging, some have started sending unsolicited messages to applicants if they have previously chatted with them.

"I think it's OK if you're the one to contact them that way," says Mr. Amoroso. "But otherwise, it should be off limits for the college to IM you."

Some deans have concluded that offering instant messaging would create the false impression that they were available to chat at all hours. After all, many high-school students use IM in the evenings, after most admissions staffers have logged off for the day.

"Students could be hoping to talk to you at any point in time, and you need to have staff available to answer their questions," says Lisa Meyer, vice president for enrollment at Whittier College, in California. "The worst thing I could do is say 'feel free to IM me,' and not respond."

Bradley University, in Peoria, Ill., has found a way around that dilemma by requiring admissions staff who answer students' questions over the phone to simultaneously log on to Instant Messenger as well.

"A call may come in or an IM may come in, and just as they can't answer two calls at the same time, they won't be able to answer all instant messages at once," says Thomas W. Richmond, director of admissions, marketing, and communications. "We've found it's worked out well, though, because some of the students who would have called now IM us instead."

Get Out of My Facebook

Some college admissions officials, including those at Goucher College and Allegheny College, have created profiles for their institutions on social-networking Web sites. They say they hope such efforts will make their colleges seem cool in the eyes of teenagers who frequent virtual hangouts like Facebook and MySpace.

But nothing could be less cool than crashing the online party.

"A lot of these sites are by invitation only, and college officials don't like to hear that they're not invited," says Robert A. Sevier, senior vice president for strategy at Stamats. "Students look askance at any business, including colleges, that inserts itself in those places. It's like if you're invited to a dinner party and you start selling Amway during dessert."

College recruiters also take a risk when they establish profiles on the popular social-networking sites. For instance, Roanoke Bible College, in Elizabeth City, N.C., has a profile on MySpace, complete with pictures of the campus and a list of "heroes," which includes the names of the college's past presidents. Recently, an anonymous user posted a comment bragging about how he or she had earned a 2.9 grade-point average that semester and how "even dumb people can make it happen at RBC."

Although E.L. Jones, an admissions counselor at Roanoke, monitors the content, such inappropriate posts and messages can slip through the cracks. A few months ago, a MySpace member called to tell him that there were pictures of strippers on the Web site. Mr. Jones discovered that someone had hacked into the college's user profile and linked it to a pornographic site.

Having an online profile poses another risk: It may encourage students to see admissions deans as peers.

Jess H. Lord, dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College, recently added his profile to Facebook so that students at the college could easily contact him. Then, in February, one applicant sent him a "friend request," so he could add the dean to his personal network.

"I thought maybe I should contact the student and chide them for even doing that," says Mr. Lord, who has not responded to the request. "But then I thought maybe there's some cultural divide I'm not aware of, so I'll just assume they did it innocently, and weren't trying to curry favor with me."

An increasing number of colleges, including Creighton University, have started to send text messages to prospective students' cellphones, either to congratulate them on acceptances or to remind them of application deadlines. Unlike e-mail messages, which teens may not read for days, text messages reach students immediately.

Some admissions deans have decided that such communications may be inappropriate.

"There's an age-old question in admissions about how we should balance our role of building personal relationships with applicants with the reality that we spend half of our time turning them down," says Mr. Lord. "And I wonder if there's a barrier we cross in texting and IM'ing that clouds what our role in the process is. It could be misleading to students in terms of their chance at admissions."

In any case, survey data on high-school students shows that most of them regard text messages as intrusive, because teenagers often exceed their text-messaging limits and run up huge cellphone bills. Mr. Amoroso, the high-school senior, received a few messages reminding him of deadlines, and said they were more annoying than helpful. "I think the communication relationship should be informal, but not that informal," he says.

Warts and All

Through trial and error, many admissions deans say they have found that their newer features, like blogs and instant messenging, are much more popular with teenagers when they allow current students and younger staff members to create the content and communicate with students.

Some colleges employ students to serve as online college ambassadors, chatting regularly with prospective applicants through instant messenger. Four years ago, Mr. Thomas, Colby's director of admissions, hired students to log on to Instant Messenger during the summer so they could answer questions from admitted students.

The response was overwhelmingly positive. Mr. Thomas was so surprised by the quality of the questions students asked through this medium that he decided to offer IM year-round on the college's Web site.

"Everybody applying to college is after insider information, and they don't think they're going to get it from the college," said Mr. Thomas. "But they do believe the students will be honest with them."

Mr. Thomas and other admissions officials say trusting students to represent their institutions is difficult. Yet they believe colleges gain credibility with applicants by letting current students present a less-than-perfect picture of campus life.

The University of North Dakota, Dickinson College, the State University of New York College at Purchase, and Franklin & Marshall College, among others, have created blogs and video logs for potential students.

When Anthony Bernatas, a junior at the Derryfield School, in Manchester, N.H., began his college search this year, those personal online diaries became one of his favorite ways to look into institutions that interested him. He was suspicious, however, of student blogs that seemed overwhelmingly positive.

"When nothing less than perfect is expressed, you wonder, is the student getting some reward for writing this?" says Mr. Bernatas. "There's bound to be something wrong with every school. I'd rather be told about that than show up at a college and find out it's less than they told me it would be."

And in the experience of some admissions officials, students who get free rein to document their lives usually exercise sound judgment. Dennis Trotter, vice president for enrollment management and dean of admission at Franklin & Marshall, gave a group of students video cameras and allowed them to record whatever they wanted about their lives.

He says he was surprised at how many good ideas the students had — including recording their journey into Philadelphia to see a rock concert and talking about how close city nightlife was to the college — and how conscientious they were about the material they included. One student even asked if it was all right that one scene he filmed from his study-abroad semester in Ireland included a table with beer bottles on it. Mr. Trotter decided it was OK, because it was a realistic portrayal of student life. And besides, the students were of legal drinking age in Ireland.

Sticking With Tradition

The biggest mistake admissions officials can make when experimenting with new ways to reach out to prospective applicants is to ignore their tried-and-true methods of disseminating information about their college, according to higher-education marketing consultants.

Sending old-fashioned mail is particularly essential now that so many of the materials that colleges send to students electronically do not reach their parents. The parents are more involved than ever before in their students' college choices, so it is worthwhile to send materials that, even if addressed to the children, will catch mom or dad's eye.

Mr. Sevier, at Stamats, says that while a fancy virtual online tour might be a cool thing for colleges to offer, campus visits still heavily influence students' opinions of a college.

Having a great Web site is important, say some deans, but its content should send the same message and create the same feel for the college as print materials do. Dennis Craig, vice president for admissions at Purchase, says the first thing prospective students do when visiting his office's Web site is to request paper materials. The same may go for e-mail messaging and online chats: They are nice perks, but telephone calls and in-person interviews allow colleges to extend the personal touch that applicants expect.

"I always try to tell colleges to go back to traditional mediums," says Mr. Leamon of Stamats. "Some colleges may have a great video on YouTube, or offer something very flashy, but there's a lot more of a benefit to have a student walk through the campus, and that's where I'd be putting my money."

Most importantly, colleges have to consider their institutional identity and the expectations of their applicants. That lesson is one that Mr. Pauls, who printed the text-messaging brochures at North Dakota, now takes to heart. His staff recently considered adding instant messaging and texting to their recruiting efforts, but decided to stick to the media they are more familiar with, like brochures, radio advertisements, and e-mail messages.

His office has decided to heed the advice admissions officials often give applicants who are eager to impress: Be yourself.

"The reality is there are some campuses that have interesting technology to begin with and maybe they have a better chance at being successful in these mediums," says Mr. Pauls. "For us, our school has a great character, but when we tried to do those new things, we feel like an old person trying to be young."