http://www.thelawlorgroup.com/intel/focus/0803-online-strategies-to-engage-admitted-students

I actually agree with the decision makers on this one. What would happen if you rejected a student because of what was on their facebook or myspace instead of their official application (with all the required material) and the student found out about it? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I also disagree with you that email is dead in communicating with your applicants. You’re their counselor, not their friend. The rules are different. Students still use their email accounts (if for nothing else than to log into their facebook accounts) but studies show they use it for “business purposes”, such as communicating with colleges. Also, you discount the input of parents at your peril – they are just as pivotal in a student’s decision-making process than anything. So even if it is the parent reading the email, what have you really lost?

Tangled Up in Tech – Admissions deans grapple with the promises and pitfalls of electronic recruiting

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Kenton B. Pauls, director of enrollment services at the University of North Dakota, knew that high-school students frequently send one another text messages, so last year he decided to incorporate text-messaging lingo into the viewbook…”

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i28/28a03601.htm

Also, for new media innovators having a tough time getting buy-in on new-media approaches, sometimes the argument to adopt certain approaches needs to be honed.

To go back to the title of this post (“Facebook? Not in Our House!”), a search on Facebook for *class of 2012* turns up 500+ groups, and that is without search variants such as *collegename ’12*. Showing these search results along with a list of easily developed additional arguments for being proactive can help persuade higher-ups if there is resistance:
- The Facebook group will exist even if we don’t start it
- The kids are already on Facebook, so it would be relatively easy to get them to join
- We can help stop misinformation, and further inform/soft sell in the group
- We can connect students with each other to help yield applicants/reduce summer melt
- We can build connections before they arrive, potentially helping retention
- Our competitors’ Facebook groups have more members than ours, and Suzy, Johnny, and Sally (who also applied to our school) are in our competitor’s Facebook group
- The VP/director’s alma mater has a class of 2012 group on Facebook

etc. etc. with some time, we could probably triple the size of that list.

If you express interest and offer constructive ideas for old media and how to integrate it with new media (especially in terms of developing metrics for print materials as I mentioned before), your boss might gain additional confidence in your judgment re: new media.

Back to sending out some e-mails to prospective students and checking the incoming student Facebook group