The Campus Visit: In-Person Vibes and Virtual Values
This is the first in a two-part series about maximizing prospective students’ campus visit experiences, this time featuring on-campus events.
In-person campus tours are one of our favorite experiences. Even if we’ve been to a campus many times, we love listening to a student tour guide describe the research they do with faculty in a laboratory or a lecture hall where they first fell in love with an academic discipline that transformed their vision for their lives.
In a qualitative research session with students from Auburn University, a participant recalled looking down at the sidewalk during her tour and noting the attractive appearance of the sidewalk’s surface. She wondered: if even the sidewalk is so lovely, how much more wonderful would the rest of the Auburn student experience be? The sidewalk enticed her to pay greater attention and, in retrospect, was coherent with what she knew about belonging to the Auburn Family. The sidewalk was a sign of the intentionality behind both what the University prepared for students and how members of the Auburn Family are supposed to treat each other.
This is an example of how campus tours can surprise and delight prospective students and their supporters. However, we know it can feel like there has been a decline in the number of prospective students participating in campus visits. According to Encoura, in 2023, only 36% of prospective students said that “open houses and campus visits” were the most-reliable tools for whittling down their lists of prospective institutions—down from 63% in 2019. The pandemic is a clear factor in this shift—the effective ramping up of virtual schooling experiences beginning in 2020 has only boosted many prospective students’ expectations that they should have access to what they need from home.
Nonetheless, the experience of actually visiting campus serves as an unparalleled opportunity to aid in decision-making. Campus visits can help students overcome fears, answer lingering questions, build and enhance relationships and verify your claims and promises. When we interview students and supporters about what catches their attention during a campus visit, they often use the word “vibes.” Visitors to your campus are constantly looking for clues to the social and emotional life of your campus—is this a place where Greek life and athletics are common activities? Is this a place where students are “chill” (another word interviewees use a lot) and able to be themselves? You can make a claim that your curriculum is rigorous or that graduates can expect to get their first job within six months after commencement, but what may matter equally to some students is whether the community is open-hearted and whether support structures are easily accessed.
We also know from our research that both the desire and ability to visit campuses can vary wildly. We’ve met families that plan on visiting 15 or more institutions in person, with some visits happening in the prospective student’s seventh- or eighth-grade year. We’ve also met families for whom in-person visits are simply out of the budget, so the first time their student sees their chosen college is on move-in day. In between those two poles stand many prospective students and supporters who are willing to make visits, but they want to be sure their investment will be worth it. How do you make the case that your campus is (the) one that they need to spend their money and time to see in person?
Ramp up your in-person campus visit experience
Here are ten considerations to jumpstart your thinking about the many details that add up to an experience that compels students to choose you.
1. BEGIN WITH THE PARKING EXPERIENCE.
How difficult is it to obtain a parking permit or to figure out where a rideshare driver should drop off and pick up? How difficult is it for guests to find parking? Do you have personalized reserved places with clear direction to that spot? Do you greet your guests in the parking lot or leave it to chance that they’ll readily find you?
How difficult is it for visitors to find information they need about seeking accommodations for different ability levels or negotiating campus if they are fluent in languages other than English?
Our point here is that when you think “parking,” you should think about “access.”
2. BE SURE THE CAMPUS LOOKS IMPECCABLE.
An unattractive campus sets an unflattering vibe that is hard to overcome. As families arrive on campus, they should see that the grounds are neat and that obvious building maintenance issues are under repair. Signage should be in good condition and trash and recycling collected.
During a multi-day study of one campus’s visitor experience, we embarked on a tour beginning at a distinguished-looking visitors center. On the sidewalk where we gathered with our student guide, someone had dumped trash in a plastic bag near the sidewalk. The trash, including a liter container of motor oil, had fallen out of the bag. As we spent the day observing other events from inside this beautiful old building, we could see that the trash remained there for several hours. That languishing bag of trash may be as memorable to prospective students and their supporters as the elegance of the visitors center. The little details are not so little during these important moments.
3. MAKE REGISTRATION EASY.
Don’t ask for more information than you really need, and behave as though you already know your guests. Make it easy for guests to access their itineraries and make changes from their cell phones.
Part two of this piece will, in part, discuss the work RHB has done with Baylor and Auburn universities to craft portals in Slate that allow prospective students to easily create a personalized itinerary as part of a coherent visit strategy aligning on-campus and virtual experiences, so stay tuned for that.
4. MAKE YOUR WELCOME IMMEDIATELY ENGAGING.
Don’t make anyone wait for something to happen. Direct them to a website; hand them a programmed iPad; show them a video; let them review a book of recent alumni profiles.
Detail matters here, too. During our aforementioned multi-day campus visit study, a screen in a presentation room played a video of rotating images of campus, students and activities like kayaking and sporting events in the attractive city where the institution is located. We loved what was on the screen, but the accompanying music was at times too melancholic. We assumed the soundtrack was meant to add gravitas, but instead it added sleepiness right before guests’ big day was about to begin.
5. SPEND MORE TIME PAYING ATTENTION THAN YOU DO SPEAKING.
Offer more than a guided tour where students and families nod along as they are being spoken to. Part of the benefit of being on campus is that students can engage in dialog directly with a campus representative. Allow for this opportunity. Make sure that student guides are listening for comments and questions just as intently from visitors in the back of the tour group as they are to those in the front.
Some of what you need to be attentive to will emerge in unprogrammed moments between events, like when families are sitting in the visitor center waiting for a presentation or tour to begin. If a prospective student and family member are looking through a brochure and doing calculations on a cell phone, does their conversation give you a clue to how you can reassure them about the value of the campus tour and of your institutions? Are some of your guests wearing new-looking t-shirts from institutions in your competitor set? What would you want guests to know about how your institution is distinctive from that particular competitor? These cues provide an easy way to open up a conversation with guests tailored to their positions in the decision-making process.
6. HAVE A CLEAR PLAN.
If it’s an open house, keep to an agenda, but give some breathing room in the schedule. Offer suggestions for any free time that’s built into the schedule. If you have Instagrammable gardens or a nearby bakery or ice cream shop, suggest these spots so guests have a little time to talk amongst themselves and also to create positive multi-sensory associations with your campus.
7. ASSIGN EACH GUEST A MENTOR OR BUDDY FROM YOUR CAMPUS OR ENROLLMENT TEAM.
By doing so, you provide visitors additional opportunity to learn about life on campus and reinforce their sense of connection to your institution. There’s no substitute for the power of human connection in amplifying the proof points in your lookbook (or to counter the impression of a bag of trash left on a curb). We consistently hear about a single person who sold a campus to a family because of their warmth, attentiveness and ability to ask guests questions that dig deeply into their ambitions and their doubts.
8. GIVE EXCELLENT TOURS.
Make sure your student guides are authentic, but make sure they are also prepared. Don’t leave tours to chance. Train, train, train. And then train again. Guides may give three tours a day, but guests may take only one.
Make sure that guides know that they can sacrifice a script or a part of a tour if conditions are not conducive to following the typical path a tour takes. Encourage guides to be attentive to hazards like sidewalk cracks or the presence of machinery that wasn’t there the day before. We’ve seen guests trip over bike racks impinging on a sidewalk and walk under the buckets of earth-moving equipment because they are trying to dutifully follow a guide. It can be easy to forget how much trust guests invest in their guides, whose job it is to move people through spaces with which they might be completely unfamiliar.
9. MAKE CERTAIN THAT FACULTY AND COACHES ARE PREPARED FOR VISITORS TO CLASSROOMS AND ATHLETIC FACILITIES.
Everyone on campus is busy. Understandably, they have their own priorities that they must consider. But every interaction makes a difference to a prospect and their families, so prepare these key figures to advocate for your institution.
One of our favorite tour experiences happened when we were handed off to an assistant athletic director to talk to us about the baseball field. He was an engaging conversationalist. During our walk to look at the field, we passed through an athletics reception space set up to host a children’s poetry and art event. This spurred a discussion about all the kinds of events held in the space, demonstrating that the proximity of different activities to each other created the endless possibility for discovery on this campus.
10. WHAT MEMORIES DO YOU INTEND TO CREATE?
Think about what experiences your guests will walk away with. What will they tell their friends? Word-of-mouth is a powerful communication tool. Ensure they have something wonderful and worthwhile to share.
A personalized itinerary is great for this, so students and families can check out labs, classrooms or other facilities that are important to their particular college plans. This is also an opportunity to do something highly enjoyable. We took a historical tour of a campus that revealed buildings that were skipped during the general campus tour. This was a fun tour because we learned in greater depth about important people and architectural and landscape features that made the campus unique. Tours like this also help prospective students understand that when they enroll, they become part of a much greater story of work and innovation that they will help write over their lifetimes.
Give yourself the gift of new experiences
We provided ten considerations for how to elevate your on-campus visit experience. We’ll reinforce the importance of giving yourself the gift of having new experiences on your campus as often as you can. You know why you love where you work, but those are your own reasons. There are many more to be discovered, even by you. If you’d like to talk more about how to find those reasons, or how you might improve your own campus visit experience, we’re here to chat.
In our next installment, we’ll turn to virtual visit experiences: what makes a good virtual tour, how to make signing up for and personalizing a tour easier, and how to align what happens in virtual space with what happens in person to create a truly special welcome for prospective students.
