Colleges Can Break Through the Clutter by Marketing in Groups

Part 4 of a series on reforming college admissions and strategies for a successful college search

I have long been fascinated by the Claremont colleges, a cluster of seven institutions that share a single campus in California, and thought they might be a good fit for my younger son, Reid. He is a fast and nuanced learner, but unsure about his career path. The combination of these colleges next to one another offering cross-registration seemed like a great opportunity that most individual liberal arts colleges would not be able to match.

So I signed us up to watch a webinar presentation called “8 of the Best Colleges,” all well-known liberal-arts institutions. It would include a presentation of 3–5 minutes each from Claremont McKenna College, but also Colorado College, Connecticut College, Grinnell College, Haverford College, Kenyon College, Macalester College, and Sarah Lawrence College.

I thought the presentation by Claremont McKenna was intriguing, and it made me even more interested in the college. All my son remembered, however, was the block program offered by Colorado College. The concept of taking one class at a time sounded unique to him, and he was drawn to the outdoorsy feel of Colorado. He never applied to Claremont McKenna, but he did apply to Colorado College, which he might not have heard of if he hadn’t watched that webinar.

“They all say the same thing.”

And I began to think, “Why don’t more colleges do this?” Reid received recruiting materials from more than 300 colleges. I had been keeping a running tab but I will never know the exact number because he got so tired of the piles of brochures and postcards he got in the mail that he threw almost all of them away in a series of purges. When I asked him why, he shrugged and said: “They all say the same thing.”

I wondered previously in this series of blog posts why college recruitment is so uncoordinated. It is extraordinarily hard for any one college to cut through the clutter in any high school senior’s mailbox, email inbox, or phone. So this post is an idea for colleges to get noticed: if you could line up a number of similarly-minded colleges and give each a few minutes to give their TED Talk, that might be enough to hold a teenager’s attention.

College groups that could jointly market themselves

I started thinking about groups of colleges that could start marketing together. For example, take the many technology schools across the northeastern tier of the United States: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, maybe Clarkson University and Rose-Hulman. They all presumably seek to attract similar-minded students, but they offer different degree programs, all in very different environments (small town, big city, fraternity culture, Division 1 sports, no sports). Would they be better off marketing together rather than apart? I think so.

How about the many urban Catholic universities across the Midwest, such as Creighton University, DePaul University, Loyola University Chicago, Marquette University, Saint Louis University, the University of Dayton, and Xavier University. Again, they are likely trying to tap into similar recruitment lines, and find students with comparable profiles. Yet, they are all very different. A student wanting the more urban feel of a campus amidst city streets might find Saint Louis and Marquette appealing, while others would be attracted to the more self-enclosed campus within a city such as Loyola or Xavier. Again, I feel they could accomplish more as a group than they could alone.

I could come up with many lists of colleges that are trying to market to similar audiences: institutions that emphasize environmental education, small private colleges in eastern Pennsylvania, colleges affiliated with the Presbyterian church, work colleges, colleges with e-sports teams, pharmacy schools, music schools, maritime academies. You get the idea.

You win some, you lose some

It is not without risk: as an admissions director, you would need to understand that you might lose one of your recruits to whatever that child perceives to be a shinier object. But if your college has something interesting to sell, it shouldn’t be afraid to be compared to other colleges. You’ll lose some and you’ll win some, but it should shake out that your college will get more truly interested and motivated potential applicants.

Some joint marketing efforts exist. For example, Colleges that Change Lives has been holding marketing events for 25 years, since shortly after the publication of a book by the same name written by an author who wanted to point out some hidden gems in American higher education. But at 44 colleges — some public, some private, religious, urban, rural — these colleges are too numerous, too diverse, and too dispersed to really be comparable.

Marketing in groups of less than 10 seems more ideal. After that it becomes a college fair. College fairs draw hundreds of schools to the same location but the sheer number of colleges is intimidating, and the effect is an overwhelming sameness. Hoping that a distracted high school student will pick up a pen or other swag is no way for a college to market itself.

Other smaller groups of colleges are known to travel in packs. For example, Bates College, Davidson College, Oberlin College, Occidental College and Smith College are known to make joint presentations. I wonder why more colleges don’t try this. Rather than trying to stand out individually, it may help to ride another college’s coattails, and offer some coattails of your own.

The importance of word of mouth

My son serendipitously happened across a college he possibly never would have otherwise considered. And that webinar had other unforeseen benefits: I knew little about Sarah Lawrence beforehand, but I recommended it to the daughter of a friend who was looking for an artsy urban college near New York City. She was not familiar with Sarah Lawrence before then, but she applied and was accepted.

Imagine that kind of word-of-mouth success being repeated over and over again. And multiply that by the possible number of college marketing collaborations that there could be. It certainly stands a better chance of breaking through than the thousands of emails and mailings that seek to make an impression, but fade into the background because they look just like what everyone else is trying to sell.