Strategies to Enhance Your College’s Visit Experience

A friend once described the college choice process as a drama in two acts. In Act 1, the student looks at hard facts such as: 

• Do they have my major? 
• Can I afford it? 
• Do graduates get good jobs?  
• Can I get into med school from here? 

In Act 2, they begin to rank their top choices. Interestingly, this ranking is often based on intangibles such as: 

• Did the campus feel vibrant?
• Can I picture myself here?
• Are the people welcoming and friendly?
• Does someone on campus look like me?
• Was I treated like I was special?

Central to Act 2 is the campus visit. Study after study, including many conducted for our clients, affirm that the campus visit remains one of the pivotal moments in the college choice process. We know that students are unlikely to attend a college they have not visited and that a visit, especially an in-person visit, is a powerful declaration of interest. 

Historically, students visited campus, stayed overnight in an apartment or residence hall, and spent one or more days shadowing students and talking to faculty. Today, students and parents can explore campus through virtual experiences. And in-person visits are shorter and seldom involve an overnight stay so a student and their family can visit multiple colleges in a one or two-day period. 

In any form, the visit remains a critical step in the college choice process. With that in mind, we wanted to offer nine ideas for enhancing your campus visit strategy. 

9 Ways to Make Your Campus Visits Better

1. Mystery Shop Your Competitors

Go online and visit them virtually. If possible, give yourself a self-guided tour of their campus. Get the clearest possible understanding of who you are selling against. This information will help you differentiate your visit.

2. Make Visits Memorable

One client used the term “edutainment” to describe the visit. “Half education,” she said, “and half entertainment.” As you think about the visit experience, remember that it must not only be memorable, but it must differentiate your campus from other colleges on the student’s short list. In general, students are most interested in talking to other students and meeting with faculty. They really don’t want to hear from the president or learn when you were founded. They want to connect.

3. Make Visits Audience Centric

Every aspect of the visit must be designed from her or his perspective. Understand that it is always more about them (students) and less about you (the college).

4. Customize Every Visit

Women who want to study engineering will have different visit expectations than men who want to study nursing. Resist the temptation to treat all visiting students the same. Anything you can learn about the student before the visit should be used to customize the visit.

5. Be Personal and Personable

Whether in person or online, people connect emotionally, demonstrate empathy, are welcoming and hospitable, and can probe and respond. Prospective students, like all people, want to (even demand) to be understood, valued, and comfortable.

6. Offer Parents a Separate Visit Experience

Parents tend to have different yet overlapping information needs than their sons and daughters. They are concerned about cost, academic experience (who is teaching what), and safety.

7. Feed Them 😊

Make sure to have a variety of snacks for all types of diets. Snacks are for students and parents.

8. Conduct a Post-Visit Survey

Ask both students and parents “How’d we do?” and “How can we do better?” Any changes to the visit should be based on good data. In addition, asking for the input of prospects and parents communicates that you care about their experiences.

9. Follow Up on Their Experience

Remember, by visiting, these students demonstrated a keen interest in your school. Make sure you have a next step in the queue. Keep the momentum. One client described the follow up as part of their “keep sold” strategy.

Read More: How to Increase Application Yield

Make It a Campus Wide Event

Everyone on campus must understand their role in providing a great visit experience. Too often, faculty and staff view the campus visit as a vast inconvenience and their goal is just to get the thing over with. People with this attitude should never have any interaction with visitors.

Train and Continually Monitor Your Tour Leaders

Guides should be trained to listen carefully. Further, they must be able to personalize the campus—and their own experiences—in meaningful, relatable ways.  

Every morning, before the start of the school day, take a stroll on the money walk. The money walk is the path that most tours follow. Make sure that everything your prospective students will encounter on the money walk makes a positive impression. 

Break your overall visit strategy into three parts: 

• Before the visit: How are you prepping prospective students for the visit? What can you learn from them before the visit that will allow you to further customize the visit? 
• During the visit: How have you demonstrated what you have learned about the prospect during the visit? 
• After the visit: What does your post-visit follow-up look like? Remember to follow up on their experience. 

Track Outcomes Data

Track your college visit outcomes data. Organize these data by tour guide and, when possible, by faculty. This will allow you to isolate potential problems and take corrective action.

Conduct a Mystery Shop

Do a secret shop on your own visit program. There’s nothing like a boots-on-the-ground perspective to give you a sense of how things work.

Read More: Enroll More Now: 3 Steps You Can Take Today

Improving Your Virtual Visit Experience

The Virtual Campus Experience provides students who can’t easily visit in person with a way to experience your campus through a welcoming, personalized digital experience. Stamats has created Virtual Campus Experiences for community colleges, universities, and academic medical centers to help prospective students picture themselves on campus. A virtual visit strategy can include:

• Hero video: This is the welcome and shares what to know about the campus. It feels approachable and helps your visitors know you really want them there. 
• Campus and student highlights: Showcase your various campuses and what each one offers. Share a variety of stories, told from the viewpoints of different student perspectives. Show visitors why your college is a fun and exciting place to learn. 
• “Day in the life” student stories: Shadow a student throughout their day, juggling activities and studies—and how they thrive with your support services.  
• “Meet the faculty” videos: Introduce instructors and directors in areas of interest. 
• “Take a tour” video: Show prospective students your facilities, technology, and fun activities.

Virtual visits are a complement to, not a replacement for, enrollment marketing materials. The goal is to expand on the selling points of your campus, culture, and student life.

Whether your prospective students and their parents visit in person or online, you have an opportunity to provide them with an immersive, positive experience that showcases your college and why they could choose you. Doing this gets them one step closer to enrollment.