To Size Up Colleges, Students Now Shop Online

Carnevale, D., (2005). To size up colleges, students now shop online. In P. De Palma (Ed.), Computers in society (pp.105-108). Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill.
Unit 5, Article 24

Review by Kim Doyle

Destination-U is now one of the many online resources where students can go to learn about various colleges. College officials know their website is the first point of contact for prospective students and must make a good impression. So they are going all out to make their website as inviting and helpful as possible. Drexel University, one of the colleges cited as an example in this article, provides e-mail addresses of current students who have agreed to respond to questions from prospective students. Joan T. McDonald, VP for enrollment management at Drexel notes that the tricky part of technology is having enough staff to make sure that responses to student inquiries are pretty much instantaneous. Drexel officials have also done everything they can to make sure their institution comes up at the top of as many Google searches for colleges as possible. They do this by making sure they use the Meta tags, hidden descriptive information about Internet pages that search engines use.

The College Board offers one of the most popular college-match services. This is free to the public and officials report that on average, more than one million students use this service every month. Students fill out a questionnaire identifying what they are looking for in a college, location, etc. The search provides a list of colleges that match the criteria given by the student.

Gregory A. Pyke, senior associate dean of admission for Wesleyan University, says that colleges now need to be prepared for surprise visits by prospective students. Doing initial research on the Internet may eliminate the step of contacting the college in advance to set up a visit. Other officials are quoted in this article saying that despite the advantages technology offers in the college search process, admissions personnel have not given up on the personal touch. Most still develop glossy brochures and students will still want to arrange visits to get a feel for colleges.

Reaction

I don’t find this surprising. Given the expanse of the Internet and the information available at our fingertips, why shouldn't colleges be using it to market their “product”? I think this is a great way for students to learn about colleges and for colleges to make themselves known. Prospective students can become aware of many colleges and universities that they may never have considered or even known about. And, this process enables students to learn a fair amount about a college if a visitation is not possible. I’m glad that some of these services are free. As my kids approach college age, I’m sure we will be checking them out.