Back in the spring of 2010, when I was working in the Office of Marketing and Communications at Saint Michael’s College, I had the opportunity to meet Justin Bayer. Our conversation was supposed to be about the company he was working for but it quickly turned to admissions marketing, twitter, and this little idea Justin was toying with to help improve the visit experience for high school students. Both coming from admission backgrounds, we discussed the importance of the campus visit in the overall decision-making process and the need for institutions to receive honest feedback about visit programs.
Since that conversation, Justin Bayer launched Welcome to College, a “one-stop shop for everything college visit related, enabling students to rank and organize their campus visit experiences.” In 2011 Welcome to College was named a Fast Company & Dell Visualizing Success Winner and Justin had the opportunity to speak on a panel at SXSW Interactive in 2012.
Luckily, Justin was willing to answer a few questions about his company and share his college visit story.
1) Justin, thank you so much for answering a few questions about Welcome to College. Can you share a quick history of the company, starting from when the idea for this site was born?
Justin: The entire idea behind Welcome to College is rooted in my own college visit story. As I was visiting colleges in the late 90’s, I was pretty set on my list, however my guidance counselor continued to push me to visit another institution he thought was a good fit for me. It was this visit to the University of Dayton that changed everything during my search process. I fell in love and I like to call it my turning point in the entire process, this visit changed my life. I went on to become a tour guide at UD and caught the bug to work in higher education. Having the ability to help high school students find their best fit for college was something I quickly became very passionate about.
The idea for Welcome to College was born late one May night in 2004 while living in Burlington, VT and I bought the domain, welcometocollege.com. I was in graduate school at the University of Vermont at the time and I was fascinated with the growth which was occurring on the web. My first full time position in higher ed was to run and manage the visit program at UVM and I loved every second of it. It was during this time, working with passionate tour guides and engaging with visitors on a daily basis, that the concept for Welcome to College started to come together. I truly believed that there was a void on the web when it came to resources to help students plan, rate, and share their college visits. As social and mobile tools began to rise between 2005–2009, I quickly realized the window was now or never to make the leap and give this a go. Welcome to College was launched in late September 2010 and there has been no looking back.
2) What are the benefits to high school students who use Welcome to College?
It all starts with the ability to track and compare their impressions as they go through the college visit process. The college search process is extremely personal and we wanted to build a tool where the user could keep track of everything important to them in their own profile. Students can use Welcome to College to quickly find helpful resources for planning visits (like finding local hotels and restaurants) in addition to a link going directly to a specific institution’s “schedule a visit” page. Users have the option to share their impressions publicly on the institution’s page or they can keep all of their information private. Our CollegeVisits iPhone app and mobile website make life easy for these students by being able to capture photos and impressions in the moment or shortly after the visit is complete.
3) What are the benefits for institutions who partner with Welcome to College?
While running the student tour guide program in Vermont, we struggled to get good, authentic feedback on our visit programs. One of my favorite elements of Welcome to College is the ability to share valuable, genuine data in real-time with our partnering institutions to help them better understand the impressions of their visitors to effectively measure and manage their college visit programs. In addition, other benefits include the ability to customize questions in our impression tracker and CollegeVisits iPhone app, the ability to brand content on the institution’s profile page, and the ability to respond to users who take the time to leave feedback from their visit.
4) Anything else?
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined an interactive 1973 GMC RV playing a critical role in helping us build Welcome to College. If you have not had the chance to meet MARV our Mobile Automated Research Vehicle, please reach out and we’ll try to schedule time to swing by in the future. You will be glad you did.
I believe Welcome to College has enormous value to high school students and institutions. But you have to give to get. In tomorrow’s blog post I’m going to give three tips for how your institution can take advantage of a partnership with Welcome to College.