To Size Up Colleges, Students Now Shop Online

Institutions pep up their Web sites with flashy graphics, podcasts, and blogs

Read the transcript of a live, online discussion with Judy Hingle, director of professional development at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, about using the Web to recruit students. Printer friendly E-mail article Subscribe Order reprints

By DAN CARNEVALE

The same high-school students who think nothing of going to J. Crew's Web site to order the right pair of jeans -- sifting through the plethora of styles that seem to change by the week -- are turning out to be equally sophisticated online consumers of college information.

Take Gina M. Antonini, who is set to graduate from Thomas A. Edison High School, in Virginia. After spending much of her spare time in high school working to become a singer-songwriter, she wanted a college with a strong music program. She turned to a Web site called Destination-U, which is just one of many online services -- some for profit, some not -- that allow students to learn about various colleges and universities before setting foot on any of their campuses. And colleges themselves are working hard to make sure that students see, and relate to, their official Web sites.

But selling colleges online is more difficult than selling boot-fit jeans. The competition from other institutions is stiff and getting more so, leading to a kind of online arms race that pits splashy Flash graphics against the latest interactive features, like admissions blogs and podcasts.

"This is a response to the consumer culture, and it really does benefit the institution," says Shelley Rodgers, director of government relations and communications at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "These students that we are seeing today are very Internet savvy."

First Contact

Admissions officials know their Web sites are the first point of contact for many prospective students, says Judy Hingle, director for professional development at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The association has created a list of Internet services that help high-school students search for and apply to colleges (http://www.nacac.com/w_general.html).

"It has changed from the Internet being a supplement to the Internet being the first source," Ms. Hingle says. "For a great majority of students, this is going to be their first impression. This is going to be their handshake."

With that in mind, Drexel University's admissions office provides e-mail addresses of current students who have agreed to respond to questions from prospective students. The biggest challenge is making sure replies come quickly, says Joan T. McDonald, vice president for enrollment management at Drexel.

"They do expect pretty much instantaneous responses," Ms. McDonald says. "The use of technology is terrific in recruiting students, but you have to have the staff to be there to respond."

Starting in September, Drexel plans to make its Web presence even more personalized for interested applicants. Potential students will each be given a Web page on the university's server. The pages will highlight campus information in which applicants have expressed an interest.

For example, if a potential student is considering majoring in biology, the university's biology information will be front and center. And as announcements are made about research projects or events surrounding a topic of interest to that student, the student's personal Web page will be updated with that information.

"It's really customized or tailored information for a student," Ms. McDonald says. "Students want to know that their specific interests are going to be met."

Drexel officials have also worked to make sure the institution's Web site appears at the top of as many Google queries involving colleges as possible. The university surveys incoming students and asks them how they used the Internet to search for information about Drexel and other institutions and what terms they plugged into search engines. Then the university tweaks its Web site and its meta tags -- the hidden descriptive information about Web pages that search engines use.

"You want to make sure you're monitoring that activity as much as possible, so that you come to the top of Web searches," says Ms. McDonald.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute started a student blog this spring, featuring three university students who post messages once a week about their lives on the campus (http://polyblogs.rpi.edu).

"I write about how exams went, how much homework I have," says one of the bloggers, Bryan Knight, a senior studying computer-systems engineering and computer science. "One night I wrote about how I went on a date with a girl I met online and how it was a complete disaster."

Glenna L. Ryan, director of enrollment services at Rensselaer, says the blogs have proved popular with parents as well as high-school students. The bloggers receive about one e-mail message per week from students and parents, asking about such topics as campus housing or what novels they're reading.

"It's really been a great way to connect students to the campus in a virtual format," Ms. Ryan says. "It's really about the student-to-student contact."

While the blogs take an informal tone, they are tamer than many unofficial student blogs at other institutions, which favor swear words and feature tales of drunkenness and emotional breakdowns. The student representatives are handpicked by Rensselaer, but Ms. Ryan says the university has never censored anything that the students have written for their blogs.

Professional Help

As colleges try to serve up information on the Web to parents and students, a multitude of online businesses are trying to guide students to colleges that can match their interests and abilities. And those businesses have found numerous ways to cash in on guiding students through the dizzying college-application process. For every step in the process, there is an online service out there promising to make it easier.

Among the most popular college-match services is one offered by the College Board. Since so many students are already visiting the College Board Web site to gather information about the SAT and check their scores, they also use the organization's Web services, which are free to the public.

More than one million students use the organization's college-search service (http://collegeboard.com/csearch) every month on average, officials say. Students fill out a questionnaire, explaining what kinds of colleges they are looking for. The survey allows students to choose among specific criteria, such as how close a college is to a city, what kinds of sports and activities are available, and enrollment.

The search then provides a number of colleges that match the student's preferences, with several pages of information collected from the College Board's annual survey, such as what percentage of students are admitted, what factors colleges consider when admitting students, and freshman retention.

When a student expresses interest in a particular college, the student will also be given names of other institutions reviewed by students with similar interests -- similar to Amazon.com's feature displaying other products that shoppers with similar interests bought.

Laura Barnes, product director for CollegeBoard.com, says the search feature helps students find colleges they might not otherwise be aware of. "That's definitely one of the goals of the College Board, to expand their opportunities," Ms. Barnes says. "We try to be an objective and trusted source of the information."

Destination-U, which charges students a one-time fee of $49.95, provides a similar service.

Greg Waldorf, chief executive officer of the company, likens the service to a personal guidance counselor on the Internet. "Choosing a college is a really complex decision," he says. "For the cost of about one application, isn't it worth having good advice going in?"

Mr. Waldorf says the company's service is different than the College Board's -- instead of asking students to describe their ideal colleges, students are asked to describe themselves and their learning styles. They are then matched with appropriate colleges.

"We think one of the reasons that the four-year graduation rate isn't very good is because kids are going to the wrong school," he says. "If kids apply to schools where they're well matched, they have a better chance of getting in, and more importantly they have a better chance of graduating on time."

In addition, Destination-U offers a planning service that lets students know when they have to turn in the different components of their applications, such as their test scores and their essays.

Ms. Antonini, who will graduate from her Virginia high school in June, says the system at Destination-U is simple to use, although she felt the initial survey, which takes about 15 minutes to complete, was a bit long. But she liked how the Web site lists several matching institutions, labeling them as "reach," "target," and "safety," depending on how likely she would be to get accepted. Destination-U also provided information about admissions, enrollment, graduation rates, and cost for each institution.

After she got her list of institutions, Ms. Antonini also searched through each college's Web site to get more information, such as how close the campus was to a major city, the male-to-female ratio of the students, and how close it was to her home. "I don't want to be too far," she says. "And I don't want to be too close."

One of the suggestions on her list was an institution she had never heard of: Middle Tennessee State University.

"It's kind of an out-there school," she says. "I don't think I would have come across it. It was a rare gem, I guess you would say."

For Ms. Antonini, the university seemed to harmonize perfectly with her music interests. It is located just outside of Nashville, and its curriculum includes music production, so she can fulfill her goal of becoming a producer. She is set to start classes there in the fall.

However, not everything about the university is perfect -- Ms. Antonini is a big pop-music fan, and she expects to do some adjusting to live near the country-music Mecca. "I'm not so much a country fan," she says. "But I'm getting used to it now."

Surprise Visits

Gregory A. Pyke, senior associate dean of admission for Wesleyan University, says he can tell that applicants are using new online resources to discover the university -- but he isn't always sure which tools. More and more students are arriving at Wesleyan for visits without making any official contact beforehand, and he doubts that is by accident.

"If you're showing up on our campus, I suspect you're doing some research to get here -- you weren't just wandering around in your car," Mr. Pyke says. "It means we have to be ready."

Technology generally supplements the traditional outreach methods, college officials say, but it does not replace them. Colleges still mail glossy brochures, and students still visit campuses to get a feel for colleges. And name recognition still goes a long way in selling a student on a particular university.

J. James Wager, assistant vice provost for enrollment management and university registrar at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, says Internet tools help the university reach out to students, but that officials still rely on old-fashioned methods to attract applicants.

"We still haven't given up on what I call the personal touch," Mr. Wager says. "But we're using the Internet pretty extensively."

Besides, although students depend on the Web to conduct research about colleges, they don't always buy what the institution is trying to sell them. Britni E. Wilcher, a graduating senior at Claremont High School, in California, says she bypasses much of a college Web site's bells and whistles, like blogs and podcasts, for the important information, such as what courses are available and who the professors are.

"I just look for the information I'm interested in," she says. "On the Internet, you can mold your own perspective of a college."