Gaining Acceptance

Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology

Home > Gaining Acceptance

Recruiting & Retention Technology

Gaining Acceptance

9/1/2007

By Matt Villano

Last year, the school discovered Media Logic, which developed a special website—a “microsite” of the campus’s already existing portal site—to qualify prospective students who visit the school site. The microsite poses six basic questions to prospects, including whether each student wants an information session, or wishes to receive supplemental materials to review on his or her own time. Hambury says that while these questions seem simple, they provide the school with just enough information to make all student responses meaningful in the sense that the school R ECR U I T I NG & R ETE N T ION T ECH NOLOGY campustechnology.com 29 is able to mine some degree of data from every question. So far, the microsite seems to be working effectively since it launched less than one year ago: Inquiries are up 45 percent, while application numbers are up 25 percent.

“When [prospective students] come to the website, we estimate we have oneand- a-half to three minutes to capture their information and figure out how we need to proceed,” Hambury explains. “If we can give people exactly what they want in that short a period of time, we think we have a good [chance] of at least getting them to apply.”

BRANDEIS UTILIZES an online calendaring system that enables prospective students to register with the school, and schedule information sessions and tours from the comfort of their own homes.

Tours and Staying Power

Still other schools have applied different technologies to handle aspects of recruitment, admissions, enrollment, and retention. At Brandeis University (MA), admissions officials have turned to software from TimeTrade Systems to streamline recruitment efforts for prospective students. The software presents high schoolers with an online calendaring system that enables them to register with the school, and schedule information sessions and tours from the comfort of their own homes.

Before TimeTrade, Brandeis didn’t schedule any appointments for prospective students; the visitors just showed up. Jacqueline Rockman, associate director of admissions, says that under the new approach, university officials can collect data on these individuals through the registration forms they fill out. The data eventually become part of the school’s database for marketing, down the road. The process also makes campus visits more personal, as prospective students receive e-mail confirmations and reminders before their visits, as well as follow-ups with links to evaluations of their experiences, after the fact.

“All of this has saved us time and provided us with better data,” she says, noting that the entire hosted solution cost about $6,000 per year for the software and $1,000 for additional custom programming. “These benefits have proven to be invaluable to our recruitment process,” she adds.