If you answered “false” to both, you have your fingers on the pulse of today’s teens who are researching and applying to colleges.
At least that’s what they told us in their responses to our 2017 “Mythbusting Enrollment Marketing” survey, designed to elicit their responses about a range of tactics colleges use to reach them during their college search and selection.
In general, teens do engage heavily in online research throughout their college search and choice. In fact, 62 percent say a website is highly influential in their view of a college.
What’s more important than the website? One thing: Seventy-eight percent say a campus visit/ tour. But here are other responses*:
* Teens had the option of selecting from 11 choices and ranking each option on a scale from one to five (highest). Percentages indicate those who selected a four or five.
As we observed in our 2015 “Mythbusting Admissions” study, how teens interact with their friends isn’t necessarily an indicator of how they want to interact with adults — or college admission representatives.
While teens much prefer to text, Snap, or message their friends, it appears that they still recognize the utility of email.
When asked, “How would you prefer to hear from the colleges to which you are considering applying during each phase of the admission process?” a sizable majority of teen respondents chose email over every other choice offered (direct mail, text message, social media, phone or in-person).
And when asked how they would like an admission officer from a “college that really interests you” to be in touch:
These are among the interesting findings that are emerging from the data in this year’s survey, which follows two previous studies:
In those studies, and our current Mythbusting research, we administered an identical survey to higher ed enrollment, digital, and marketing professionals to find out what they know (or think they know) about what teens want. We then compared the professionals’ responses to what teens told us.
This year, as in previous years, we found many surprises lurking in the data. One of them, hinted at above, is that teens actually do value in-person contacts — at college fairs and on campus, as well as in one-on-one interactions through phone calls and online channels. This is true throughout the entire admission process.
We asked students questions about:
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?