From:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i48/48a03102.htm

Admissions Officers Look to Marketers
By ELIZABETH F. FARRELL

Improving diversity, attracting top students, and getting applicants to share their personal information were just a few of the challenges 1,200 admissions officers tackled at a conference on recruitment, retention, and marketing in mid-July.

The annual conference, held in Denver this year, is arranged by Noel-Levitz, a private higher-education consulting firm with headquarters in Iowa City. The conference brought together admissions deans and student-affairs professionals from a variety of public, private, two-year, and four-year institutions. Many of the college representatives who attended are clients of Noel-Levitz.

While some advocates of college-admissions reform criticize institutions for using marketing data and tactics to woo students, many admissions professionals in Denver said the unpredictable and rapidly changing behaviors of their applicants made such practices all the more necessary.

“There’s a sea change going on in terms of what students are looking for in colleges and how they are researching and making their decisions,” said Bonnie Rose, vice president for academic affairs at Niagara University. “We are really scrambling to understand the students and respond to them in this dynamic environment.”

Furthermore, many admissions officials said they needed more marketing guidance and data about potential students because administrators want them to improve the geographic and ethnic diversity of their student populations, and because faculty members are pressuring them to bring in more students who are serious about academics.

According to Peter S. Bryant, senior vice president at Noel-Levitz, some of these goals may be unrealistic. Only 10 percent of applicants are interested in attending college more than a day’s drive from their hometowns, he said, so colleges should not set ambitious goals for attracting students from far away. And recruiting the most academically competitive students is also more difficult than many realize, Mr. Bryant said, because there are so few of those students.

“So many institutions are going after high-achieving students,” Mr. Bryant said. “But think about these facts before you spend so much money recruiting those students that are such a small segment of the market.”

http://chronicle.com
Section: Students
Volume 52, Issue 48, Page A31