The Medium is the (Social) Message, Part 3

The following entry is an edited version of my answer to the following question posted on the website Quora.com

 How do schools use social media to recruit students?

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The question is broad enough to cover two different responses. How do the schools themselves use social media in their recruitment efforts? How do schools use efforts on the part of students to contact schools via social media?

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In the US, schools have been trying out various methods to reach out to students via social media.

All schools have webpages. Embedded within them are many links to various forms of social media. These include YouTube videos, Facebook pages, twitter accounts and blogs. Most schools, on their admission pages, have links to blogs. In some cases administrators or admissions officers write the blogs. In others, students write the blogs. In most cases, the blogs are edited by the administration and the people doing them are either paid to do so as part of their jobs within the school or, in the case of students, some get an hourly wage or work-study or academic credit. Therefore, the information that goes out is often sanitized. Studies show that many prospective students don’t love the blogs, as they don’t have the edge that many blogs trying to get readers often do. Some schools have great students doing the writing and who take the job seriously. Others, the posts are intermittent at best and often are far out of date. A recent study shows that people who see social media from schools that is way behind often end up hurting themselves as it demonstrates the school is behind rather than ahead of the curve. 

Many schools use twitter too. The effectiveness of tweets going out to students has yet to be measured in any systematic way that I have seen. In part it depends on the person sending out the tweets and in part it depends on the demographics of the students receiving them. There are a few studies that say a sizable percentage of prospective students don’t like schools appropriating ‘their’ media for what they consider advertising.

The same is true for Facebook. The Facebook pages of many schools are there to promote good news and provide great visuals. The schools are by nature conservative in what they put out and therefore they think carefully about putting out anything that could offend anyone for any reason. It is rare for a school to mention anything that does not highlight something good.

This means that humor, which is transgressive by nature, often is off the table. Idyllic photos of students on green grass are nice but they tend to blend together. In addition, the schools often to do not have time to keep up with the pace that students are used to from the likes of Huffington of The Daily Beast. I can think of one school whose dean posts great photos of family and activities at the school on his Facebook page. This humanizes the high-ranking official in ways that I don’t see at many other places. It takes time to keep up with Facebook and for a high-ranking official at a school to do this is rare.

Email has become what used to be the snail mail of a previous generation. Schools sending unending email updates to prospective students may be sending a bad message (pun intended). I get hundreds of emails each day and if a bunch of them come from the same place I am usually inclined to delete them all without reading them. Based on my conversations with many students, most of the emails from colleges and universities, unless they come from a school that is already on a student’s list of choices, will often be deleted without ever being read. Even those schools at which students have an interest don’t pay much attention to many of the emails unless the subject line is great or has to do with a something specific. Thee are now books and podcasts on how to write a compelling subject heading. Surveys show that many students think of college emails as spam more than useful information in most cases.

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 The other way the Quora question might be interpreted: do schools do searches on social media to find out about students. 

                                                               What not to do on social media

Lots of articles have been written whether admission officers search Facebook and other media/sites for information about students. Kaplan released survey results on how many admission offices do searches; more importantly, they found that the percentage of damaging material found has nearly tripled in the past couple of years

While this information should encourage students to be more careful (obviously good advice) at least at highly selective schools in which the number of people who apply is huge and growing, it is virtually impossible for the school to do much sleuthing.

Schools will often say, nevertheless, that they sometimes do search. I cannot say how accurate the survey is or what deans have said in some interviews but it’s just common senses (occasionally not in great supply for any of us) not to put up anything that makes a student look bad. Paradoxically, what can potentially look bad are photos of students, often young, fit and tanned, who are wearing next to nothing at the beach or a pool often holding a drink in hand.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are a small percentage of students who are doing great things on social media. Some post great links to political or social issues that demonstrate a passion in positive social change. Some downstate great humor and wit. And others find beauty in art, literature, architecture or science. Every day, the posts from students who are Facebook friends enlighten me.

However, even those students who have blogs they have maintained over a long period and have large readerships may not help much in the selective admission process. Although the students give the links to the blogs in their applications and they will be disappointed to learn that very few at selective schools have the time to take any more than even a glance at an entry or two. Why?

Here is the math: an admission officer who does the initial screen of students often has to evaluate 30 or more applications every day for months. If a reader spends 15 minutes per application this adds up to 7.5 hours per day. And that is assuming no interruptions, bathroom breaks, lunch or anything else.

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In addition, Admission officer have other responsibilities besides just reading; some have significant other responsibilities both within and without the admission office. As a result, anything that makes them take more time in the evaluation of a student could potentially (consciously or unconsciously) be perceived as adding to an already overwhelming workload.  Extra stuff of any sort, whether a blog or a series of certificates, fun photos or books of poems or scientific theses or almost anything else will rarely get a click to open the file.  Since most of the reading that happens these days is electronic most of the submission that fills back shelves with physical material is rarely scanned and sits unevaluated and then thrown out without any human having looked at any of it.

On the other hand, one way to up the chances to get your social media looked at would be make personal contact with the admission officers in charge of evaluating students from your geographical region. Many schools actually track demonstrated interest and if a student can let that individual know about a great blog (or whatever else) then this effort may get positive attention. Remember that schools outside the very top are obsessed with yield: getting students they want to say yes. So creating a series of smart contacts with people on a campus may be a plus in the admission process. But less is more in some ways. A few great outreach efforts are far better than an unending stream on emails to an already busy admission officer.