#53: Sorting Through the Mountain of College Recruiting Materials

Today we are talking about how to manage the deluge of college recruiting materials to help choose the best college or university. My guest today is Dr. Shirley Roels. She has been a career counselor and a marketing professor focusing on nonprofit marketing.  She also speaks from her experience as someone who made mistakes when she was selecting a college and did a better job helping her two sons in their selection process. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the International Network for Christian Higher Education. 

In this podcast we discuss:

• Her terrible decision-making process when choosing her college 
• Experiences that helped her understand how best to wade through college marketing materials
• The dangers of not being careful in the college selection process
• Tips to effectively sort through the many college recruitment materials
• Types of college recruitment media that are more helpful than others
• How to view and “position” recruitment media
• The timing and value of talking with real people in the process
• The timing and role of making campus visits
• Some red flags to watch for in recruitment media
• The problem with only focusing on the costs of a college or university
• Ways colleges and universities hide the actual costs of their schools
• The challenges of online media recruitment materials, and how to manage these materials
• How to make the most of a campus visit
• The importance of taking classes in person early on (freshman and sophomore years)
•  What if you aren’t sure you made the right college choice after your first semester?
• How to find Christian support at public universities–Christian study centers
• A word for first-generation and ethnic-minority college students

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• David Wunder, “How to Choose a College” on the College Faith podcast
• Council for Christian Colleges & Universities – CCCU
• The Council of Independent Colleges
• Consortium of Christian Study Centers
• Karl Johnson, “How Christian Study Centers Minister to University Students” on the College Faith podcast
• Robert L. Peters, Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or Ph.D.