Blog #4: Marketing to Sell A School

I can remember getting my first piece of mail from Saint Mike’s during my sophomore year of high school. Looking back, it should have come as no surprise to me that Saint Mike’s was the first school I heard from because, not only am I a resident of Chittenden County, but my father is also an Alumnus of the school.

Dr. Sarah Kelly, who is the Vice President of Enrollment Management at Saint Mike’s, presented to my marketing class on Tuesday about the topic of Higher Education Marketing. I personally found this presentation to be very interesting.

During her presentation, Dr. Kelly discussed the different tactics that she uses to know which prospective students to reach out to during their high school years. Dr. Kelly gave a statistic that states that there are somewhere around 3 million students that plan on attending college after high school.  Dr. Kelly’s job is to narrow this number down to the average number of students in a given Saint Michael’s College freshman class, which is just over 500 students.

It seems like it should be pretty easy to cut the 3 million down to 500, but Dr. Kelly said that her job is becoming increasingly more difficult. There are many factors that are affecting change in the type of student Dr. Kelly has to target, some of which include the changing ethnicity of the American population and the changing average income for American families.

After listening to Dr. Kelly present during my marketing class, I began to reflect on my college search process more. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to stay in New England, but not attend any of the schools in Vermont. I had my sights on Bentley University, and had been dreaming of attending since touring the school with my brother when I was in eighth grade.

In high school, I never planned on attending Saint Mike’s so I always overlooked the pamphlets and letters I received. The material I received from Bentley throughout high school made the college appear so glossy and almost intangible. Since this had been the stretch school I applied to, the material they sent me never made it seem like they really wanted me. However, with my admittance package, Bentley sent me a t-shirt. They intended for every student admitted to take a picture of themselves with this t-shirt on and post the picture to the Class of 2016 Facebook page. By doing so, Bentley thought that it would give a sense of community to the class because you had all just been admitted and received this pretty awesome free t-shirt. This is a good marketing strategy when you think about it because students will wear these shirts and want to brag about how great they think the school is to anyone who will listen. As I’ve learned in class, word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most successful types. 

Applying to schools as a transfer student is a completely different process than the first time around, mainly because you know exactly what you want and don’t want in a college. After I had shown interest in transferring to Saint Mike’s and started receiving their material all over again, I saw it all in a new light. Every letter and pamphlet I received from the school and every meeting I had with admissions made me feel like the school really and truly wanted me. And let me tell you, that is a pretty good feeling after coming from a school where you’re considered just another number. One of the largest factors in my decision to come to Saint Mike’s the second time around was the feeling of belonging that I got after every encounter with someone from the school. I would say that Dr. Sarah Kelly is very successful at her job because everything she did to reach out to me is one of the largest reasons why I chose to attend Saint Michael’s College.