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Helping college-bound students find their kindred spirits
Posted on March 9th, 2009 by and currently 3 commenting.My son is a sophomore in college. My youngest daughter is about to leave home in a year and-a-half. So finding that “just right” college has been at topic at our house for quite some time now.
We actually hired an educational adviser for my daughter, who is working with her to create a list of college options. She’s spent hours online trying to figure out which ones to visit. It’s a tough job. For the most part, they all look just alike online. It is hard to capture a soul of place with an online brochure.
When my son was visiting one of his college options, he looked at me after the tour and said, “Not my people.” Finally he “found his people” and made a great decision. That phrase, “not my people,” stuck with me and has intrigued me for some time now.
So here ’s my question: Why haven’t colleges and universities embraced the idea of engaging their customers (students) to amplify and tell their story? Some are adding blogs of real students, but it’s a bit buried. And, well, the students chosen to be a part of the story seem a bit hand-picked or filtered to me.
Wednesday, Dr. Bruce Yandle from Clemson University shared something he was a part of a long time ago at Clemson. He decided to hire a student from each department to help the University generate new ideas. (Sort of a student advisory board.) He paid them a very small sum of money and was stunned at how excited and engaged they were right out of the gate. They wanted to see financial information, meet weekly, etc. They were eager and excited to have a voice.
At Brains on Fire, we’ve seen the power of giving passionate, smart people a voice first hand with RAGE, the South Carolina teen anti-tobacco use movement.
Here is the opportunity as I see it: Colleges and universities are struggling to do more with less marketing dollars. Why not create a community of loud and proud customers (students) and arm them with knowledge and tools to share their passions? Follow the Fiskateer’s model of finding leads that can unite a slew of students and voices - current and past. It seems like this would give prospective students a chance to find “their people” a lot easier online. And colleges could spend more time with students that have basically “pre-qualified” themselves.
Tags: Clemson University, college, college-bound students, Dr. Bruce Yandle, Fiskateers, Kindred Spirits, my people, not my people, RAGE, Rage Against the Haze, same tribe, unversity
3 Responses to “Helping college-bound students find their kindred spirits”
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I was fortunate to be on the faculty when Bruce started this student advisory board and saw the energy and excitement first hand from many students. I think your idea is great and support it whole-heartedly. However a potential issue is the fact that many faculty in the university do not view the students as customers. It takes someone highly student-focused like Bruce Yandle to make your idea work, and I hope someday that will happen.
Best wishes to your daughter as she sorts through her options! One bit of advice from a past “academic advisor” is to make sure that she understands the degree requirements in the undergraduate announcements (her “contract” to graduate) where ever she lands - so many students seem to rely on what they are told by someone else and this can be a costly mistake. It is also a good indicator of how the university cares for their students to understand how students are advised before they sign up for classes.
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Wow. Kathy. How cool to have you join the conversation. And I will pass that advice on to my son (who is at Clemson now!) and my daughter.
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Hi Robbin!
As a recent graduate and previous campus marketing employee on a community college and a large, private university. I went through the same round of questions of going “where are all the real student population voices?”, they are hidden in college dining areas and in classrooms, they aren’t going to be heard in marketing publications. Why? It’s the fact that many colleges only pick the best of the best to be interviewed and or to maintain the wholesome image that they think the parents would prefer screening out most of the “real” population. I know, I worked for the school and I couldn’t even get my voice heard because I had bright red hair at the time even though I was an honor student and knew all about the campus!
I would have loved to hear “real” student voices when I picked a college, I just had to go out there and find them myself using myspace and facebook to find current students that could tell me more about what it was really like.
I was a “these aren’t my people” kind of student also when it came to picking a university. I loved my community college with the diversity of age ranges and types of people, I had a family there for my first two years. Having to go to a university can be extremely terrifying, especially when everyone is a little bit more “trust fund than rock and roll”.
However, no matter where you go. You’ll find amazing people just like you. If I have any advice to give to any college student it would be this: No matter how much everyone is alike, you are different. And by being different you get more notice from teachers, staff and faculty.
I got internships, job offers and was able to gain recommendations for life from professors. Just by sticking out of the crowd. And that’s what really matters.
Now that I am graduated, I probably talk to maybe five students I went to school with and I had a great social life there.
A book that helped me greatly through college is called “This Book Is Not Required” by Inge Bell
And if they still can’t find that perfect university, I recommend two years of community college first. It saves money, smaller classrooms, larger diversity of people and when they do decide to go to a university they’ll have more time to work towards scholarships! I took an extra year at community college just to do volunteering and it almost paid for most of my university years.
Cheers and good luck!
-Miss Destructo
P.S. I will have to make this into a blog post now! Thanks for the inspiration!
