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Intelligence
Blogging for Student Recruitment

Intelligence

Blogging for Student Recruitment

Sep 11, 2005By Michael Stoner

Articles
Note the following articles about blogging and student recruitment:

Etan Horowitz, “Student blogs dish dirt about daily college life,” Orlando Sentinel, 12 December 2005.

Ken Smith, “To blog or not to blog,” University Business, December 2005.

Up and Running as of December 2005

Alfred University: Online diaries of AU freshmen running for several years.

American University in Cairo: Six students report on their lives in class and in the field.

Ball State University: Student blogs and podcasts began fall 2005. The blogs are real blogs (not just diaries) and bloggers are producing podcasts, as well as posting text and photos.

Bluffton University: Online diary Beaver Blog started spring 2004. Will resume and expand in fall 2005.

Carleton College: used online diaries several times for students who are on off-campus programs to show prospective students what the off-campus experience is like. Examples here and here.

Dominican University: Dominican has used student blogs since the fall of 2004. We established microsites for our undergraduate recruitment. The blogs include photos and are archived. We also have a live blog from the dean of our undergraduate college, which is very popular.

Embry-Riddle Technical University: Embry-Riddle offers student diaries from two different locations.

Furman University: Furman has the most experience with student diaries, having launched online them years before any other institution did.

Gallaudet University: Gallaudet University started student online journals, the gBLOG, in early 2005. Most of the students continued to write throughout the summer. Hope to include faculty and staff blogs in the future. 

Hampshire College: Several students blogged in summer 2004, some from quite interesting spots.

Houghton College: Photoblogging and podcasting for student recruitment. Students who are photobloggers received a digital camera as compensation and the podcasters received an Apple iPod.

Indiana University: Diaries of interns already online. Working on “First-Year Experiences” and plan to launch it by the end of September 2005.

Ithaca College: Regular blog from a selected student at our communications program in Los Angeles. The semester-long program provides internships in the heart of the entertainment industry to our School of Communications students; they can also enroll in several courses there and attend workshops and seminars with industry leaders (e.g., Mark Romanek ‘81, film and music video director, and Tim Menke, senior publicist at Paramount Pictures) . The internships are pretty attractive: New Line Cinema, The Tonight Show, Malcolm in the Middle, Capital Records, and Comedy Central.

Lakeland College: Student blogs for more than year, expanding to athletes and adult students in fall 2005. 

Lewis & Clark College: Several years experience with online diaries. Journals from previous year archived on site.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Blogs from students and admissions staff at MyMIT.

McDaniel College: Blogs launched fall 2005.

Norwich University: Blogs launched fall 2005. Blogs permit comments.

Philadelphia University: Journals from four students.

Randolph-Macon Woman’s College: Faculty and student blogs are publicly accessible, but mainly serve an internal community-building function. I.e. A professor blogs in as bicycles across the country, then an incoming transfer student sees that blog and asks to do the same. Logistics meant that we had to have someone reenter the diary entries upon receiving the blogger’s e‑mail or a phone call.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Blogs from five students. Press release about the PolyBlogs here.

Roger Williams University: One dairy of a freshman year.

Rollins College: Five students offer dairies starting 15 December 2005.

Santa Clara University: Blogs launched fall 2005.

St. Michael’s College: Blogs running for 3 years, “incredibly successful,” one of the most-visited areas of our site.

Southern Utah University: For three semesters we have had two students who would blog about their experiences throughout the semester. The bloggers changed each semester. This semester, [fall, 2005] we’ve started something new by combining blogging and a reality show by having 16 contestants who are issued a challenge each week. They are supposed to use their blogs to record their attempts at completing the challenge and each week a contestant is eliminated.

University of Dayton: Student blogs began fall 2005, circulated via RSS & podcasts.

University of Maryland School of Social Work: Blogs launched in fall, 2005. “Since we are paying these bloggers, we ran a help wanted ad and will begin interviewing candidates next week. We will look at what they bring to the table as far as life experiences and ability to communicate with future students.” Using Chat University to host the blogs.

University of Nebraska, Lincoln: Vodcasts provide views of the “Real Nebraska,” allowing visitors to “see what real students have to say about life in Husker land.”

Ursinus College: Student blogging at Ursinus was started as a regular web feature for the 2004–2005 academic year, and is both a recruiting tool and an informational feature for parents and alumni.

University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou) Alumni Association: Online diaries of first-year and other students posted on Alumni Association website.

University of the Pacific: Blogs up for a year, launched as part of a new recruitment effort that transferred the bulk of the communication work from a traditional viewbook to a website. The package won a CASE national gold award.

Westminster College: This great website has featured student blogs since 2003. Entries from past years are archived. Note the program specific blogs—for aviation and education.

Wharton School: Diaries provide insights into academic and other aspects of MBA life.


  • Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?