Sham Wow . . . College Marketing Hits the Big Time!
One of the most important changes in the admissions process during the past 20 years is college marketing. The impact and significance of this development should never be underestimated. Every high school student, and more importantly, the parents of every high school student, needs to be aware of this new marketing push and its impact on the admissions process.
Way back during the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a bulge in the college age population very similar to what high school students face today. This is the time when many of the parents of today’s applicants were applying to college. Naturally, today’s parents remember their own experience. College admissions offices were flooded with applications from well qualified students. Most colleges didn’t need to “market” themselves to potential students . . . and they didn’t. If a student requested information, the college would forward a brochure but that was about the extent of their “marketing” effort. If a college contacted a high school student, entirely unsolicited, it was a genuine example of the college’s interest and likely something for the student to be excited about! Only the very best high school students were recruited through a college’s marketing effort.
Things have changed . . . a lot. Population changes generally occur in cycles. A bulge in births is usually followed by a drop in births. So, a bulge in college age students is generally followed by a drop in college age students. This is exactly what happened following the college boom during the 1970’s and early 1980’s. In part due to a shift in births, there were many fewer high school seniors thinking about college in the 1990’s than there were just a few years earlier. Suddenly college admissions offices, even those at top schools, were facing tough competition for the best high school graduates. In order to keep dorms filled with the very best students, colleges discovered “marketing”.
Prior to the 1990’s, the sum total of marketing expertise at all of America’s colleges wouldn’t have filled a teaspoon to the top. A few years later, American colleges had become some of the most sophisticated “marketers” in the country! By coincidence, technology was revolutionizing the concept of “personal marketing” which was perfectly suited to college recruitment. It was a match made in heaven; suddenly, colleges became marketing experts.
Then, the population cycle changed again. The dip in college age students soon became a new bulge in college age students. By 2002, the number of high school seniors had grown significantly. But there was a difference with this application bulge. Colleges didn’t throw away their successful marketing efforts; they maintained them and even improved them. This new bulge in applications, partially fueled by a growing population, was actually being increased by sophisticated college marketing.
This new marketing sophistication has confused and misled thousands of parents who remember a very different situation from their own experience years ago.
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