Occasionally I got phone calls from college admissions counselors and even more rarely an alumnus of a college would call to answer any questions I might have. But I never received a college videotape in the mail, and it would be another 15 years before colleges started shipping CD-roms to prospective students.
Times have changed, and even the most traditional colleges now utilize advertising agencies and marketing companies to develop student recruitment strategies. Wabash College is no different. Our admissions office has a very sophisticated mail plan designed to hit prospective students with critical information at precise times in the recruitment cycle.
We also involve our alumni, faculty, and current students, who send emails and work the phones all with hopes of getting prospective students to apply for admission and visit campus. Once students are on campus, they tend either to fall in love with Wabash or decide that it's not for them.
More and more high school students are getting their first looks at colleges on the Internet. Sure, the mail carriers still get backaches from hauling the brochures and view books. But high school kids who want to get a jumpstart on the college search process, or who wish to get a "real look" at college options, start with the web.
So Wabash College is pleased with its new web site, which will be very accommodating for high school users starting their search on the web. Thanks to the stunning efforts of Brad Weaver, Rob Herzog, and Quentin Dodd, plus Wabash seniors Michael West and Ryan Moore, high school students checking out Wabash for the first time should have little trouble finding exactly what they want.
The critical difference in the College's new web site is that students now will be able to personalize their experience. Weaver and his web development team have created massive programming strategies that involve putting information into a database and pulling more information from it. So when we add stories and event announcements to our web site, we code them by subject or topic and store them in the database.
Then, if students spend about two minutes clicking through a menu of options on their first visit to our site—which are saved in the database—they'll be able to have a customized look at Wabash every time they come back to our site.
Here's how it works: A high school visitor to our web who indicates interests in football, history, and jazz will see student, alumni, and faculty profiles to match those interests. The latest football news and results will appear every time he comes back to the web. Announcements of jazz band concerts or Visiting Artists Series events will appear on his screen. A link to the history department's web page will be one click away.
In short, we've made it very easy for visitors -- not just prospects, but anyone who wishes to personalize -- to get exactly what they want from our web site according to the interests they select from our main menu.
But it doesn't stop there. Herzog handled the design side, which is much easier to navigate with more options to help even one-time web visitors get what they need with fewer clicks. The new site also serves up the latest campus news and events in a more prominent fashion, which creates more change, more life, and more excitement for all users.
Indeed, recruiting college students has come a long way from a simple letter from the admissions office and a campus visit. Wabash believes that its new web site will give students a real sense of the values of the College, the strength of the academic program, the energy of the campus, and a glimpse of the success of our alumni. And the best part is that it's personal, fast, and user friendly.
Log on and check it out. And as usual, we'd welcome your comments and feedback.
Jim Amidon is director of public affairs at Wabash College.