Rah! Rah! SELL! SELL!

By Kenneth M. Pierce

Big-time marketing techniques go to college

Why had student applications leveled off at Minnesota's small but academically topnotch Carleton College? Research by college officials revealed that high school seniors from warmer climes were shivering over the thought of Minnesota's winters. Prospects from the East Coast worried whether Carleton was prestigious enough; laid-back Westerners, on the other hand, figured the campus might be too formal. So Carleton changed its admissions pitch. Into a shiny, new brochure went a photo of skiing on campus. Those effete Eastern intellectual snobs got a letter filled with information about faculty achievement. Westerners were told about nearby hiking trails and canoe trips. Result: annual applications rose 44%, from about 1,400 to 2,010.

Carleton is just one of hundreds of schools that have begun to lure students with market research techniques like those used by soap and cigarette companies. Reason: tuition costs are skyrocketing and the nation's pool of 18-year-olds is shrinking (from 4.2 million in 1975 to an estimated 3.6 million by 1985).

Schools sometimes advertise on roadside billboards. More make their pitch on radio and in newspapers. But the sales aids that really hit home are the unsolicited recruitment letters that jam mailboxes of high school seniors.

As Vidur Mahadeva, 17, a top-scoring scholar from Wisconsin's Oshkosh North High School, puts it: "I get an awful lot of mail, especially from the little colleges--Beloit, St. Olaf and the rest." Fully 75% of four-year private colleges and 61% of state colleges and universities now buy mailing lists to send brochures to prospects. Lists of the 1.3 million juniors and seniors who take college entrance exams each year are sold to schools at roughly 12-c- a name--provided the students have authorized test sponsors to release their names (80% do).

When the College Entrance Examination Board introduced its computerized Student Search Service in 1971-72, about 120 schools purchased 6 million names for recruitment mailings. Last year, 880 schools purchased 22.5 million names. Some schools favor a buckshot approach. At the University of Miami, for example, where two-thirds of undergraduates come from out of state, recruiters have sent as many as 265,000 brochures at a single mailing. Most schools prefer mailings of 12,000 or so. Computers allow colleges to select student names for promotional mailings by zip code, ethnic group and family income--as well as class rank, test scores, anticipated college major and planned career. There is a "Bible college" list, a list of students interested in West Point or Annapolis, even a list of Missouri women who hope to become engineers. The student most often sought, though, according to the College Board's Darrell Morris, "is likely to be from the Northeast, in the upper third of his high school class, with verbal scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test between 400 and 600, intending to major in the liberal arts."

Like commercial mail-order marketers, college recruiters constantly ask which types of mailings produce the best response. According to College Board researchers, four-color booklets get a 50% better response (in the form of college applications or follow-up inquiries) than booklets printed in black and white. Letters personalized by computers ("Dear Adam") pull better than the impersonal "Dear Student." Students say they disliked letters that virtually "assured them of admission if they applied."

When colleges hire marketing experts, they learn that in a competitive situation they must sharpen their identities vis-a-vis other schools, just as cerealmakers strive to convince buyers of the differences among brands. In commerce this is known as "positioning," and the term is now being applied on campus. In Cambridge, Mass., for example, Lesley College, which specializes in teacher education, is trying to become known for a special new program designed to help its graduates teach economics at the grade school level. Lest applicants think that Sweet Briar College for women, near Lynchburg, Va., is some antebellum finishing school for Southern belles, the full-color photo introducing the school's brochure features three alumnae, employed in New York's financial industry, standing before the urban, limestone hulk of the American Stock Exchange. The new Sweet Briar selling motto: "An education for reality."

Most students apply to several colleges. To increase the number of those who actually enroll after being accepted--known to admissions officers as the "yield rate"--many schools sponsor spring get-togethers, known as "yield parties," for accepted students and their parents. Explains Fred Neuberger, admissions director of Vermont's Middlebury College: "If Princeton and Middlebury both accept a student and then Princeton invites him to a gathering but Middlebury doesn't, we've lost out." At Triton College in River Grove, Ill., anyone who gets in touch with the school admissions office is assigned to one of twelve full-time advisers. They offer personal counsel and coordinate financial-aid requests during the application process. Before the program was begun two years ago, only 53% of those who contacted Triton eventually enrolled. Now, a solid 70% do.

Is all this competitive hype dangerous? Not at all, says College Marketing Consultant Tommi Thornbury of Kansas City, Mo., happily reconciling Socrates and the hard sell: "Positioning means to know thyself." And then go out and merchandise like mad.

--By Kenneth M. Pierce. Reported by Joelle Attinger/Boston, with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by Joelle Attinger

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