{"id":180,"date":"2006-04-10T08:45:36","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T08:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/10\/what-students-want\/"},"modified":"2006-04-10T08:45:36","modified_gmt":"2006-04-10T08:45:36","slug":"what-students-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/10\/what-students-want\/","title":{"rendered":"What Students Want"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inside Higher Ed takes a look today at a new survey about how students choose colleges<\/a>. They make an effort to make the results sound surprising, but it’s really about what I’d expect:<\/p>\n

\n

A survey of 600 students who scored over 1100 on the SAT, half of whom scored at least 1300, found that campus visits, parents — moms more than dads — word of mouth, and college Web sites are more influential information sources for college-bound students than rankings, guidance counselors, and teachers.<\/p>\n

The report, conducted by Lipman Hearne, a marketing firm with many colleges as clients, found that the single most important factor for high-fliers in deciding where to apply was the presence of a particular program of study. About a quarter of all the students surveyed listed “a specific program of study” as the most important influence.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That certainly fits with my experience, and what I know from talking to prospective students here at Union. I was aware of the US News<\/cite> rankings back when I was applying to college, but it wasn’t a huge factor. I’m consistently amazed at how much importance college administrators place on those rankings as a result– other than geography, it’s the factor we have the least control over, and it’s not actually that big a factor in student decisions.<\/p>\n

Appropriately enough, today is an Accepted Students Day here, so in addition to my usual back-to-back classes, I get to go have lunch with a future history major (lunch is a buffet deal, and faculty are invited to sit with prospective students and their parents to talk up the school and answer questions. I have an uncanny gift for sitting down at tables occupied by budding humanists…). You’ll get some new content later, thanks to the wonders of scheduled posting, but between classes, phone tag, and the annual dog-and-pony show, I’m likely to be curled up in a little ball whimpering by 3:00 this afternoon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inside Higher Ed takes a look today at a new survey about how students choose colleges. They make an effort to make the results sound surprising, but it’s really about what I’d expect: A survey of 600 students who scored over 1100 on the SAT, half of whom scored at least 1300, found that campus… Continue reading What Students Want<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}