The following is a recap from the AMA Symposium on Higher Education: Princeton Review Session. Note that the speaker listed 10-15 items in each one, but I only grabbed the top 3-6 due to the slides being advanced.
Major channels students use for college information
- College portals
- General websites of college
- Admissions websites of college
- College visits
- Other students / peers
Time spent online
75% of seniors spend at least 15 mins per visit…an increase of 4% over last year!
Undergraduate - most important factors in school choice
- Top enrollment factors
- Reputation in field of study
- School’s reputation
- Schools accreditation
Undergraduate - least important factors in school choice
- Study abroad
- Advice from parents
- Advice from counselors
Things that annoy prospective students
- Websites that are not user friendly
- Websites that are hard to navigate
- Having to hunt to find needed info
- Lack of info or no specific info
- Bad search engines on the website
Key findings
- Admissions websites and portal websites are much more important than print
- Beginning to search at least 12 mo in advance
- Most important and critical info needs to be readily accessible
(Sample information for this undergraduate study)
- 48% Nearly half of the sample was students who already figured out the college or colleges they wanted to attend
- 36% are career driven who are looking for colleges that fit their career goals
- 13% pretty sure they’ll go to college, haven’t thought much about it.
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