College Admissions Offices Using Facebook as Recruiting Tool

Published 03 October 08 02:39 PM | Student Loan Girl

A growing number of graduate school admissions and college officers are turning to Facebook for recruiting, communicating with potential students and providing up-to-date news on the school through the social networking site, instead of relying on more traditional recruiting methods like mass mailings or emails, according to an article in Business Week (“The Admissions Office Finds Facebook,” Sept. 28, 2008).

A recent study indicated that a full 29 percent of university admissions departments surveyed now use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, to recruit new students. To date, about 60 institutions have gone so far as to establish official pages for their school on Facebook, according to Nora Barnes, director for the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

“If you're an undergraduate or graduate institution and you’re looking to attract people 35 and under, then I think you have to go to Facebook because that’s where your opportunity is,” Barnes said.

Admissions Officers Use Ads, Fan Pages, Chats to Attract Students

While some schools have leveraged Facebook as a marketing tool, purchasing ads to target students based upon their age and where they live, other institutions have focused on maintaining their Facebook fan pages, uploading pictures, news pieces, and videos detailing recent campus events.

San Diego State University’s Facebook page, for instance, features video footage of the school’s involvement with the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach and its students’ visit to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

Scott Minto, the director of the admissions office for the school’s Sports Business Management MBA Program, uses Facebook to invite students to college admissions open house events in different cities around the country. He says that the school’s Facebook community has become so active that he now uses it as his sole means of communication with many students.

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management put up a Facebook admissions page just a year ago in response to increased student demand and has experienced phenomenal success, said Richard Powers, assistant dean and director of MBA programs. Cheryl Millington, the school’s director of admissions, holds Q&A sessions with students that have drawn about 100 students each time.