Market Trends

A successful social media strategy means more than having a blog or a twitter feed. It’s one thing to have the tools, but using them correctly—that’s the key.

Our recent playbook, “10 Social Media Do’s and Don’ts for Higher Education Enrollment Success,” talked about the value of social media as recruitment tools. We struck a chord. Many of you asked me for more specific advice on making these tools work.

So, welcome to the advanced course! Admission Lab’s latest playbook, 4 Keys to Putting Your Higher Education Social Media Strategy into Action, outlines a winning strategy for social media. You develop it around these elements: channel, reach, credibility and sustainability.

This free Playbook explains how to match communication channels to your messages (for example, sending tweets about upcoming campus events). It looks at how to build those relationships that are so important to extending your reach. You’ll also learn why student-generated content is pure gold and why your strategy must be current, consistent and controlled.

I could go on, but instead, please download the Playbook. Learn how to get social media right. Admissions Lab

A newspaper columnist and mother of a high-school senior wonders if the increasing number of college entrance essays that schools require is going too far. With questions like “What was your favorite thing about last Tuesday?” and “What does Play-Doh have to do with Plato?,” she wonders if the essays are just too outside-the-box to be valuable....continue reading

Each year, The New York Times’ blog, The Choice, tracks application trends. As the deadlines roll in for colleges around the country, it is sketching out a picture of the state of college applications. It has found that many of the increases in applications are due to students and their families searching for good value or effective financial aid....continue reading

It used to be that average workers doing an average job could earn an average living, but average doesn’t cut it in this economy. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman explores this idea in a recent column, explaining that to get beyond average, students will need better access to education after high school so they can find jobs amid this time of technological change....continue reading

College letters of recommendation may be getting a bit too praise-heavy. Sure, there are some superb students out there, but they’re not all that way, right? A Chronicle of Higher Education blogger says he saw the effects of this “culture of praise” as he looked over recent letters of recommendation at the invitation of an admissions officer. “After an hour,” he writes, “I was exhausted.”...continue reading

Go to YouTube and search for Tufts University and you may stumble on “On a Date with Tufts University.” These and other videos are now on YouTube because for the class of 2014, Tufts began letting applicants create YouTube videos as an optional supplement to the required essays. They showcase each prospective student’s creativity and offer a “sense of who they are,” one dean said....continue reading

You may be responsible for higher tuition. It’s what the public wants, right? That’s what college administrators think: that the higher the tuition, the better the perceived value of their school and its education. And with higher tuition comes more ability to discount those high rates, giving you a “deal” on a valuable education. But some college presidents are bucking this trend by lowering tuition....continue reading

U.S. News & World Report, known for its college rankings, has published its first-ever guide to online degree programs, but with a twist: there are no overall rankings. Instead, the magazine published an “honor roll” of programs, ranking them in four categories. That leaves institutions unable to say how they stack up, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education....continue reading

What is the value of an education at an elite school? Do the students at those schools do better in their jobs when they graduate? These are difficult questions to measure, but some recent studies have attempted to give an answer, which suggests that while an elite education is helpful, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have into one, according to an article on Human Resource Executive Online....continue reading

The recent sex-abuse scandal at Penn State is now focusing scrutiny on popular coaches at universities across the country, places where their success and fame turn them into powerful people on campus. So, colleges and universities are taking another look at their accountability systems to find ways to keep coaches from overstepping their bounds, according to an article in USA Today....continue reading