By Jeremy Tiers, Director of Admissions Services
This high school senior class has had an experience unlike any in history, and we wanted to hear how they’re feeling about their college search. Over 31,000 of them responded to our survey – a joint project between Niche and Tudor Collegiate Strategies. Students shared their anxiety, where they’re at in their search, what their thoughts are about virtual events, and how they want colleges and universities to communicate with them.
I hope this national view of recruiting the class of 2021 is helpful and gives you a better idea of what you can do now to better serve students and meet your enrollment goals.
The Big Takeaways:
- 47% of all students, and 56% of low-income students, have not started applying to colleges yet. New England and the west coast are furthest behind.
- An overwhelming majority (almost 92%) of students are feeling fear or anxiety right now. Their top concerns are being able to afford college and making the wrong decision.
- 42% of students have not taken a standardized test.
- A majority of students (56%) have attended a virtual event by a college this year. Of those who have, 79% are interested in attending another one.
- 79% of students aren’t willing to participate in a virtual event that lasts longer than 45 minutes.
- Students prefer Instagram, by a very wide margin, over all other platforms when it comes to checking out social media pages of different colleges and universities they’re interested in.
- Nearly half of students (48%) said the communications they’ve been receiving from colleges and universities all look and sound the same. Only 8.1% said they feel very personal.
- The pandemic has not drastically changed how close to home this year’s high school senior class plans to enroll. Less than 1% of students plan to enroll online, and 40% say that distance from home doesn’t matter in their decision making – they care more about fit.
SEE THE FULL SURVEY RESULTS HERE
And here’s a WEBINAR that I just did with Will Patch from Niche where we dug deeper into the results, and did a bunch of Q&A with listeners.