So last night, I went to this presentation where a lot of colleges presented their campus, curriculum, etc. All their presentations were pretty similar and shared the same type of information. However, their tactics in catching the audiences attention did vary. I remember how the representative from Harvard tried to crack a couple of jokes and made sure to point out their 'Harry Potter dining hall.' There was also the representative from Stanford that had showed this one slide of all of its elective classes, purposely making room for all of them on such a small slide to show its expansiveness. As I was watching all of these colleges make these presentations, I was wondering how those representatives picked this of presentation based on the audience (and this applies to all those college letters as well). After all, it is a challenge. How do you get a bunch of teenagers and their parents to become interested in your college? Should you bother using history and statistics or should you focus on your different selection of courses? Should you focus on the campus or the study abroad programs?
Which aspects do you think these college representatives should include? After all, we are part of the audience that they are trying to appeal to. We have at least some idea about what we really want to hear about (or do we? >_>)
Mary Quien
4 comments:
Have you guys ever taken a close look at the brochures and booklets they send home? Just about all of the pictures look the same...for every college. I bet if we cut out pictures and left no trace of identification, we wouldn't be able to match each picture with a college name. The advertising and presentations are bound to be general. That's why all representatives stress the importance of the college tour. Sure, the kids in the picture might be smiling on picnic blankets in the lush, green grass. But what if that only happens for one week throughout the year? You can't go to that college simply because you love picnics. Those students are actors, anyway.
As much as they hate it, I secretly believe that admissions officers love applications. In fact, they can't get enough, and that is precisely why they try and shine the best light on their college and make an effort to highlight how it can accomodate to any student.
In the presentations that you saw, did each college focus in on one one of its specific assets, or did it make sure to cover all of the programs that it offered (besides pasting tons of small pictures on one slide)?
(Sam Maliha)
To answer Mary's question, of course universities wish to attract students to their schools through appealing presentations, but I doubt that there is any set package of information that college reps "should include." What they choose to include is totally up to them because every person is interested in hearing something different, so there is no single presentation that will best appeal to an entire audience.
Colleges do recognize, however, that students such as ourselves gather information from a wide range of schools, and thus have caught on to the fact that they should advertise the things that make them unique or stand out from the rest of the colleges in the country. Yet when EVERY school's representatives attempt to gain our attention by mentioning their schools' distinguishing factors, it oftentimes only makes the process more complicated. Therefore, college visits may play a larger role than do the strikingly similar or trite presentations given by representatives in our decision-making processes. Many students know exactly which college they wish to attend once they have stepped foot onto the school's campus.
(Janet Lee)
I noticed much the same thing. I think that every one of the colleges there began with a brief description of their origins, describing their storied history. UPenn had Ben Franklin, Georgetown was from the Jesuits, Stanford was designed by Olmstead. Naturally, these stories appeal to us because they remind us that when we step onto their campus, we are continuing that tradition begun from the past and furthering the legacy. It places us in a narrative larger than ourselves (continue Franklin's legacy and attend UPenn!).
It was interesting to hear all of the colleges' numerous "firsts," as in "we were the first to do this, and that, and this..." Of course, every college had its own firsts, and ensured that you heard them. After all, doesn't being first imply some sort of excellence?
I felt that all five colleges there made strong presentations. And in response to your question Sam, there were distinguishing features between them, often in specialties such as engineering (for example, UPenn will have a new center for nanotechnology built, one of the few in the country). While similar tactics were used by all five, the content did differ.
-Eric
I feel like that, especially with the growing competitiveness among students, competition among the colleges have increased as well. Many can no longer just sit and wait for the applications to come in and still maintain the quality of the previous year's student body. Thus, the brochures with the pretty campuses decorated with the pictures taken from a specific window in a specific building so as to get a specific angle on the prettiest scenic view of the campus during the best season are standard. We've come to expect them to the extent that we've started to make fun of them. So they're necessary but so are innovative ones. While the standard brochures serve bring the college's existence into the front of our minds, their more unusual tactics then serve to draw us in. For example, the University of Chicago first sent me a standard brochure. Then it sent me a series of small postcards featuring anything from a color-your-own University of Chicago seal to a map of all of the good coffee places on the campus.
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