Marketing Colleges and Universities

There are a growing number of commercial sites concerned with marketing colleges and universities. This page reviews two commercial guidebooks and two marketing companies that provide WWW services.

Many institutions do not have the equipment or expertise to develop a WWW site and rely on outside counsel for assistance. The University of Notre Dame gives credit to the company that assisted a team of individuals on campus in the creation of its WWW site on their "About This WWW Server" page. Two other marketing companies, Robert Rytter & Associates and ReZun Interactive Concepts, Inc., provide similar services and are profiled below.

The college guidebooks, Peterson's and The Princeton Review, provide same information that is published in their books on the WWW. It is interesting to compare how differently one institution is represented in the various sites.

Trinity College in Connecticut provides a good illustration:

¥ The Peterson's Guide to Undergradute Institutions is a site filled entirely text and only two options: to return to the main menu or to download an application (which is available for all institutions listed in the Guide). No link is provided to the direct source, but the content of this text is fairly straightforward and objective.

¥ The Princeton Review is an entirely different body of text that has an editoral slant. The content is long and poorly presented. This guide does provide a link directly to Trinity's home page, where the student can find out additional information about the college in a much more attractive format.

¥ Trinity College's Home Page is produced by the institution and is very detailed. Here, Trinity College administrators have control over what visitors will learn about the institution without ever meeting someone in person or visiting the campus.

¥ Trinity College also hired Robert Rytter & Associates to develop a WWW site for prospective students that will be linked to the Trinity College home page. Again, this site gives an entirely different impression of Trinity College.

These examples present some interesting questions for administrators to discuss. Trinity College is ahead of the game in this case, because they have a well-developed home page. However, institutions without a WWW site are reliant upon these guidebooks to provide information to prospective students and others who may be looking for information on the WWW.

GUIDEBOOKS

Peterson's Education Center

Peterson's provides information about an array of educational opportunities -- from summer camp to graduate school -- in a strictly formatted structure. All of the colleges listed in this site provide similar information about academic programs, characteristics of colleges and universities, and many have extensive descriptions about specific undergraduate and graduate programs as well. About 150 sites have downloadable admissions applications.

A unique quality of Peterson's site is the searching methods:

Information online :
  1. Undergraduate sector (two-year and four-year degrees): Over 3300 accredited institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada.
  2. Graduate and professional sector: Over 1,500 U.S.-accredited institutions offering graduate work in the US and abroad, offering more than 31,000 degree-granting programs.
  3. Summer Programs sector: More than 1400 organizations - from traditional camps and tour groups to private schools and colleges - offer programs for virtually every interest.

The Princeton's Review

The Princeton Review also is an online version of a printed book, The Student Access Guide to the Best Colleges. It provides prospective students and their families with information about 306 colleges and universities, which is presented with an editorial slant. In addition to profiles of colleges and universities, the site offers information about the admissions process, financial aid, standardized tests and much more.

This site also includes a variety of searching methods. You can search by:

  1. Major
  2. Level of education
  3. Keyword
  4. Ranking
Unlike Peterson's Guide, this site does not provide any information about graduate schools. It does, however, offer an opportunity for the reader to link directly to the institution's WWW page while reading its profile in the Princeton Guide.

As the illustration with Trinity College showed, the information provided by these college guidebooks is very limited in comparison to the WWW sites created by the respective institutions. The only positive quality of these guidebooks is the centeralized location of all colleges and universities, which allows access to search for certain qualities. It seems that The Princeton Review has comprised the best of both worlds in using the centeralized list of institutions with the searching capabilities and direct links to institutions' WWW sites.

The College Board

The College Board does not have a WWW site to date, but plan on launching a site in the fall of 1995. This site will provide prospective students with a college admission guidance program similar to the site Peterson's is developing now. Since the Board is responsible for the PSAT, SAT, GRE and other standardized entrance examinations as well as a standardized college application, this site will be a one-stop shop for prospective students and their families. They will not only be able to get information about the entrance exams, but also apply to the colleges of their choice.

MARKETING COMPANIES

Robert Rytter & Associates

Robert Rytter & Associates (Rytter) is a group of creative people working in a great sandbox developing cool communications in print and interactive formats.

Now, there is one sample site -- Trinity college's home page on its interactive sites.

As for their charges, I made an information request through E-mail to its President. His response follows:

Regarding: The price range of one homepage for a college.

Thanks for inquiring about the homepage for a college.  We charge $1500 
per year for a full service which includes the following:

* online electronic slide show, i.e., the "Viewbook", of the campus 
(students can view this online and even download it in Mac and PC formats)

* a contact form from which students can request a catalog and 
application directly from your university

* a customized electronic version of your application for admission 
(which students can complete and submit online, if you want them to)

* a weekly report of who looked at your universityÕs material and why (this 
is valuable market research which will tell you what criteria students 
were looking for when they did a search in our database and found your 
university).  No other vehicle can give you such accurate data so quickly.

ReZun Interactive Concepts, Inc

ReZun gave the following quotations: 
ReZun Interactive Concepts, Inc. is a full-service multimedia software developer, 
producing educational/entertainment  applications for the home consumer market. 
Now it provides Home College Tour[TM] program.
Prices:
  1. $5 a day for generating Leads and Marketing Products and Services with a customized internet site.
  2. $1825 a year for 
Modifications to a site's content are billed at $75/hour for consulting time. 
A $35/hour typing fee will be charged for text not supplied in electronic form (ASCII). 
Images must be in an 8-bit GIF format, maximum 200x200 pixels.


Please contact either myself or my colleague 
Tom Klaff for more information.  
Thank you for your interest.
Basically, the both companies do the some thing -- create and provide a Web site for companies and educational institutions for fees, but Rytter offers both print and interactive forms of services.

Both companies offer very good opportunities for small educational institutions that do not have the expertise to have a Web site presence.

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last updated: May 8, 1995