What do prospective students look for

Once again, because prospies are a diverse bunch, there is no one correct answer to how you should contact them. You should always use several platforms and methods to make yourselves available to prospective students.

The ongoing Covid pandemic has drastically changed how colleges can communicate with students. In the past, college tours and admitted student visits were a significant part of the admissions process.

However, because of the pandemic, your institution may not be able to hold college tours and visits, and many prospective students cannot travel to attend such events. As such, admissions counselors must change their strategy and focus more on online recruitment efforts. This shift can be tricky, but thankfully there is already infrastructure in place that can be used to communicate effectively with prospective students online.

In terms of the most effective online strategies for attracting prospective students, email is 1. Your emails to students should be personalized and focus on the information they want instead of the information you want to give them.

Focus on the t opics listed above: financial aid, academic programs, job prospects, and student life. An example email sent to prospective students from Kenyon College. The above email example is from but still provides an excellent example of how to reach out to and in form prospective students.

The email newsletter from Kenyon College offers information about financial aid, admissions deadlines, and graduate success stories in small, bite-size form. McGill University uses Instagram to answer prospective student questions.

Unsurprisingly, social media is another tool popular with prospective students. Instagram and Tik Tok are especially popular among Gen-Z prospective students. Social media presents the perfect opportunity to widen your reach and use bite-size media to appeal to students.

However, you want to make sure your social media comes across as personable. Nobody knows how to appeal to prospective students like your own students who have their own college admissions process fresh in their mind. Your students know better than you how to make a post or video go viral.

Let them help you create and market content for your school. Video is a prevalent communication format. Video is handy during the global pandemic as colleges can use videos to show parts of the campus currently closed to prospective students. Short videos that are a minute or two in length are a great way to introduce students to your school and invite them to seek more information by contacting an admissions counselor or current student.

Nonetheless, you need to make sure your videos look and feel professional. Videos should be both informational and aesthetically pleasing.

Once certified, they use video chat, text messages, and phone calls to support high school students through the college application, financial aid, and enrollment process. These principles are universal and can be applied across all types of institutions, even those with no prior infrastructure in place to engage prospective students with near-peer advisors.

Institutions can apply the principles of near-peer advising to expand the breadth, depth, and effectiveness of their engagements with prospective students, especially those students at the highest-risk of not enrolling.

Near-peer advising leverages current students or recent grads to strengthen the connections between institutions and their prospective students. There are three key components that can make a near-peer relationship particularly impactful—recency, modeling, and authenticity of relationships. Recency : For prospective students, having someone who had just been through the admissions process themselves is relatable. Near-peer advisors can provide credible, personalized guidance from someone who was tackling a similar process just a year or two before.

They can also be there for students at times of day that fall outside the traditional business hours of many more formal supports. If a high school student finishes a draft essay at 8 pm, it may be just the right time for a college student to hop online and take a look, and if they get some news on the weekend, their advisor is just a text away.

Modeling : Near-peer advisors serve both as guides in the application process as well as role models of matriculation. This builds a critical degree of trust. Authenticity: Matriculate has found that authenticity comes from recency. College students can relate to what high school students are going through because they recently applied to college themselves, lending them a level of both expertise and credibility. Informal communication can consist of advisors reaching out to check in before or after a high school student has a long day at their afterschool job or takes a tough exam.

Matriculate has found that these informal check-ins are extremely important in cultivating an authentic relationship—making it more likely that students will share the real reasons behind why they might be experiencing hurdles in their college process. Find out here in our guide to what looks great on a college application. We also offer expert tips on building a versatile app. Hoping to get into really prestigious schools?

We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies.

We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools , from state colleges to the Ivy League. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in.

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How to Get a Perfect , by a Perfect Scorer. Score on SAT Math. Score on SAT Reading. Score on SAT Writing. What ACT target score should you be aiming for? Cool study rooms? Helpful librarians? One thing is certain: Every student will have to go to the library at least once or twice a semester for a long research session or, heaven forbid, to print out a paper they just finished writing a few minutes before class.

So many times I have forgotten something or needed a snack between classes, and each time, my campus had exactly what I needed—and so should every good campus store. Another great place for students to take a walk through and meet some people is the campus safety department. Related: 5 Personal Safety Tips for Students. Another important thing to see on a college tour are some of the cool, fun places where students hang out with friends, study, etc. During my NSHSS Campus Takeover—in addition to all of the amazing resources, people, and buildings—I wanted to show some of my personal favorite places to hang out, both with friends and alone, to have fun or to study.

This is one of the reasons why having a student-led tour is so important! Personally, I think there should never be a campus tour with more than 10 people because no one feels like they can ask questions, the tour guide talks with few details to save time, and students spend more time rushing to catch up to the group rather than actually soaking everything in.

A small group tour, with 10 people or fewer, allows students to get personal with their tour guides and get a feel for the community as well as ask the questions that really matter. Great guides frame their tours from the perspective of a friend an idea I adopted for my NSHSS Campus Takeover who shows you around campus while sharing all the cool insider facts, history, clubs, events, and more along the way. Good luck on your college visits! For more advice to help you get ready for your college tours, check out our Campus Visits section.