The College Choice

In the college admission industry pricing is a pivotal component for families making their decisions. Challenges are faced by both small private liberal arts schools and large public universities. Private institutions have very high price tags, but give generous amounts of financial aid. Public institutions on the other hand have low tuition rates, but give very little financial aid. Private institutions face more challenges than public schools in terms of the customer. For many prospective students and their families they tend to take a lot of stock in the sticker price of the college. Many will just be turned off by the high sticker price of private schools, and not even look into the generous scholarships many institutions offer. This can result in small private schools being looked over by many families. One issue that I think plagues private institutions is the fact that their company objectives tend to be more customer oriented. This means that these companies target a market...

Ethics are a part of the college admissions process that few individuals outside of the industry have any direct exposure to. Considering the fact that college admissions counselors are essentially marketers they should abide by the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. According to the organization's statement, marketers should embody particular ethical values. These values are: Honesty - to be forthright in dealings with customers and stakeholders. Responsibility - to accept the consequences of our marketing decisions and strategies Fairness - to balance justly the needs of the buyer with the interests of the seller. Respect - to acknowledge the basic human dignity of all stakeholders. Transparency - to create a spirit of openness in marketing operations. Citizenship - to fulfill the economic, legal, philanthropic and societal responsibilities that serve stakeholders. Although these are fantastic ethical values to abide by, admission counsel...

College admissions offices do much more than decide whether or not to accept applicants into their respective institutions. Before they have the opportunity to make a decision on applicants they must attract students to gain interest in the college or university. One recruitment tool used is to implement market segmentation and targeting. All types of institutions whether they are large, small, public, or private implement forms of these marketing strategies. My expertise largely lies in the area of small, private institutions, so that will largely be the focus of my analysis. At my current institution a strategy recently implemented seeks to attract students that come from wealthier backgrounds.  This is being done in a number of ways. One way this is being done is by the addition of rowing as a varsity sport. The theory behind this addition is that people who compete in rowing tend to come from wealthier backgrounds. As The Atlantic notes, “[sports such as rowing]… require expen...

In today's world of college admission offices social media has become an increasingly used tool. Every school now seemingly has a twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat account. Lots of schools are using social media due to the fact that most college or soon to be college students use some type of social media. This has been a recent development for higher education institutions. Even a couple of years ago colleges did not have much of a social media presence. Their main source of direct marketing was in the form of mailings and phone calls with student. This form of contact has proven to become ineffective in recent years, which prompted institutions to take a step into the world of social media. For example, Ohio Wesleyan which is a private liberal arts school in Ohio dove in by creating Instagram and Facebook accounts for each admission counselor on staff. This allowed counselors to interact with prospective students and to show where they were traveling among other things. T...