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Intelligence
News Flash: College-bound Kids Are Not Looking for Flash

Intelligence

News Flash: College-bound Kids Are Not Looking for Flash

Aug 01, 2005By Michael Stoner

What do smart students-the kind that every institution wants to recruit-think is the most important element on a college website?

Content.

And that website content should be useful. It should be detailed and informative and easy to find. 

In fact, 66 percent of A students and 61 percent of B students rate content as more important than technology or animation on college websites.

This is just one interesting insight into teen behavior from “Navigating Toward E‑Recruitment,” a report that contains 10 revelations about how high school juniors use online tools—and how recruiters can interact with them. Noel-Levitz released the results of this study last week.

It’s great to see such a recent, cohesive study on an important topic, but in fact, these findings aren’t a surprise. Michael Poock and Dennis Lefond reported on the importance of content to prospective students in an article published in College and University Journal in 2001. [Reprint of this article here.]

A number of other studies have shown that college-bound students count academic information as one of their primary concerns when they’re college shopping on the web. And teens have told us in focus groups and individual interviews that content is really important. That’s one important reason why it’s always been the foundation of our consulting practice.

So, it makes you wonder what those smart kids think of colleges that have tons of Flash animation but inferior content? Maybe … the Flashier the site, the lower-quality the institution? 

That would certainly be an interesting development, given how so many admissions officers believe that they need Flash or other “interactive” components to be considered “cool” by teens.

Another key finding: teens are savvy consumers who expect fast service. They want to be able to interact with colleges on their terms. That means forms, real financial aid calculators, the ability to connect with people before, during and after application. Check this: 72 percent of those surveyed told Noel-Levitz that they submitted an inquiry form on a college site. They also welcome phone calls.

There are also plenty of students who are shopping websites anonymously [see our comments on the shopping effect here]—only 39 percent of students have personalized websites. I’d like to know what this means: does it mean that they personalized a site to enable it to market to them more effectively, or did they personalize a site because they were using it for self-service? And remember that a lot of college and university sites don’t offer a personalization option.

And, you know what else? The Noel-Levitz results indicate teens still like print: 49 percent of A students preferred a brochure over the web for facts. I must admit that I’m skeptical about this finding, but it supports my belief that viewbooks are still important. And it certainly explains why the Request Info button is the top web-based interaction for so many respondents!

You can get your own copy of the Noel-Levitz study here.


  • 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?