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Campus Visit Trend: “How much financial aid did ‘they’ give you?”

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Each month the Experience Team from TargetX will share with you a Campus Visit Tip, Trend and Talk. All of the “three T’s” are designed to give you a bit of insight into the work we do, the people we work with, and the places we pull our inspiration from. Here is this month’s “Trend”.

Ten years ago the number one question parents asked during a campus visit was, “What’s the party scene?” Then after the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois the priority question by parents was “How safe is this campus?” After our economy tanked the mainstream media began beating up Wall Street, then they singled out the mortgage industry; now they have their sights on higher education. ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Campus Visit Talk, Campus Visit Three T's, Campus Visit Tip, Campus Visit Trend, Financial Aid, Parents, Uncategorized

Persuading the parents

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Beware the parents, says popular thought leader Jeff Kallay. They’ve morphed from the relatively benign helicopters to more savage stealth bombers, and you’d better be prepared to make a good case for why they should pay all that money to send their kids to your school.

Today’s college-bound students are the offspring of Generation Xers, who are more cynical, skeptical and stealthy than the parents of your previous classes. So forget the hype, be authentic, demonstrate your return-on-investment, said Kallay in a rousing conclusion to TargetX’s Xpert Summit — the company’s annual event for users of its technology and consulting services.

Kallay’s concluding keynote was not the first time many of the attendees thought about parents during the two-day conference. In fact, ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, CRM, Email Recruiting, Generations, Millennials, Parents, Xpert Summit

Helicopter Grandparents

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If you’re still hosting an event called “Parents Weekend,” you’re behind the times. The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson suggests you recognize a growing force in the college-choice process: Grandparents.

Increasingly, admissions staff at Marymount University are finding themselves entertaining grandparents who aren’t up for the walking tours of campus, writes Johnson in her higher ed blog.

“I have never seen so many grandmothers,” said Michael Canfield, director of admissions at the Virginia school. “In many families, higher education has become a core value, so the families are congregating around it.”

What’s happening at Marymount reflects a trend that is prompting many campuses to change “Parents Weekend” to “Family Weekend,” writes Johnson, whose coverage of higher education for the Post includes frequent contributions to ...

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Categories: Campus Visit, College Recruiting, Free on Friday Webcasts, Generations, Parents

A parent's perspective

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As admissions professionals, we become so close to the application process that we need to listen to the outside perspective.

We get just that, in Andrew Ferguson’s new book, Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College. Ferguson, an accomplished writer (and father of a college-bound student), documents his family’s journey through the admissions process.

Ferguson speaks candidly about topics such as writing college essays, visiting web forums for information on schools, and the competitive nature between parents in the application process.

The author discusses the topic of the over-involved parent in the admissions process; and explains how this was the case for his family. In an online interview with “Campus Overload Live,” he addresses a question related to ...

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Categories: Parents

A view from the front lines

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I recently joined TargetX as VP of Engineering, but I’m contributing this week’s Recruitment Minute in my more taxing role as parent of a high school senior. As we reach the college search home stretch, I thought I’d share some impressions.

Lowlights:

  • The box of printed materials threatening to crush our bookcase. Our son opens almost none, and never if the school isn’t on his list.
  • Most campus tours — large groups preclude engaging with the guide, and most are interchangeable. We learned to self tour, and tried to chat up (and eavesdrop on) students.
  • Important information buried on websites — including academic break schedules and how to arrange class visits.
  • An info session using and then defining words as simple as “cadaver.”
  • Buzzword ...
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Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit Experiences, College Recruiting, Parents

Baldwin-Wallace College now includes van ride during campus visit experience

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beevan

August and September are hectic times for our consulting campus visit team members. Trent Gilbert, Emily Welsh and I are crisscrossing the country conducting ambassador/tour guide training and checking the status of campus visit improvements at many clients.

But it’s also one of the most rewarding times. Besides having the opportunity to inspire student guides to be master storytellers, render authenticity and have fun, we get to see the progress consulting campus visit clients are making based upon our recommendations.

Recently Baldwin-Wallace College in NE Ohio implemented a walking-riding tour. BWC has a unique physicality because it’s the merger of two campuses (Baldwin and Wallace Colleges) and a third campus ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Change, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Parents

Tweets from the Prez

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Presidential blogging is so yesterday. Make room for the tweeting presidents.

Jack Ohle, head of Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, is known to his Twitter followers as GustiePrez. The 62-year old has joined a still small but growing band of college presidents who are willing to share their thoughts 140 characters at a time.

Ohle hasn’t been at it very long, so he has less than 200 followers. The leader appears to be Gordon Gee, president of the Ohio State University, with 6,100 people following his thoughts. Penn state President Graham Spanier has generated enough interest that he can even boast having a Twitter impersonator — MeanGSpanier.

“Tweeting is a tricky thing,” says Augsburg College’s Paul Pribbenow in a recent article in the ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Parents, Twitter

Alfred Conference Bike a lesson in authenticity and change

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Chances are you’ve read about the Alfred University Campus Tour Conference Bike in various higher education press resources or in my colleague Ray Ulmer’s Recruitment Minute.

But let me give you the inside story.

Alfred University and their Director of Marketing, Jodi Bailey, are the kind of clients all services providers love to work with. They embrace change (even though they face internal hurdles) and are fun to work with.

Back in the winter of 2008 when I first toured Alfred’s beautiful mountainside campus in Western New York, I told them, “Your admissions office in Alumni Hall is on one far end of campus, and you’re walking tours about the full length (about 1/2 mile) to the other end ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Parents, Student Workers

XpertTip No. 82: 'Cents' and sensibility

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Regardless of who you’re voting for tomorrow, I think we all agree that there are very serious economic challenges ahead.

From the collapse of financial giants and 401k blues to dismal projections for the holiday “retail season” — it seems we’ve all got money matters on the brain.

It makes perfect sense then that the cost of college will continue to make headlines in the coming months. And it’s certain to impact your yield.

Is your office prepared to handle it?

On the eve of our nation’s biggest election, I thought I’d offer a few ideas for you to proactively address your cost. While you can’t completely control it, you should be able to control how you communicate it.

Have you considered:

  • Adding sessions on ...
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Categories: Email Campaign Ideas, eXpressNet, Lists, Parents, Social Networking, Uncategorized

XpertTip No. 73: The Gen-X Parent

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My colleague Jeff Kallay and I spent last Friday on campus at Philadelphia University, where we helped the “Rambassadors” prepare for another semester on the front lines of the campus visit.

At lunch, we got to talking with our clients Christine Greb and Kathy Kissane about what to expect on campus tours this year.

Our response? “Different parents.”

We were referring to the fact that the parents of visiting prospects are beginning to shift from “Boomers” to “X-ers,” and that with this shift comes a whole new set of values and expectations.

Jeered as the “Baby Bust,” members of Generation X were born roughly between 1965 and 1980. These “latchkey kids” are marked by the emergence of working moms and the prevalence of divorce. ...

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Categories: Millennials, Parents, Research, Uncategorized