By Jeremy Tiers, Vice President of Admissions Services
2 minute read
According to our latest Tudor Collegiate Strategies research, parents have become even more active in a student’s college search process over the past 2-3 years.
In addition to helping with financial aid and filling out applications, planning campus visits is another area where the majority of students indicated they relied on their parents or guardians.
The challenge arises when a student brings only one parent with them for a campus tour. This happens a lot more than you might think.
We continue to find that the student and parent who visit struggle to connect the ‘missing parent’ to the emotion and ‘feel’ of it all. Campus visits are an emotional, visual, and relational experience. It’s nearly impossible to adequately describe everything to the missing parent, let alone answer feel 100% confident to answer the questions he/she has.
For that missing parent, who hasn’t connected the same way with you, your colleagues, and your campus, it’ll be harder to sign-off on their son or daughter applying or depositing to your school.
With that problem in mind, here are four strategies I encourage you to make standard practice when you deal with this situation.
- In your pre-visit or pre-event communications, be intentional about personally inviting all parents or guardians to campus with the student. Mention that you understand the college decision affects the entire family, and you would love to have everyone experience this together.
- If you get word ahead of time that one parent or guardian won’t be able to make it, reach out to them separately ahead of time (email or a short phone call would be my recommendation) and ask what their top one or two questions are about your school or the college process in general. Even if they don’t have anything they’ll appreciate the additional outreach.
- Consider offering another way for the missing person to join for one or more parts of the visit/event – especially the tour. FaceTime, Skype, or another video app would work well. Show them that they’re important and prove that you are going to extra efforts to make sure they’re included.
- After the visit or event, arrange a follow-up phone call with all parents or guardians and the student. Be prepared to lead a conversation and ask the student and parent or guardian who visited direct questions about what they saw and heard, anything they were hoping to see or hear, and what they’d like to see happen next. For that missing parent or guardian, hearing them talk favorably about the experience is vital to keeping them (or getting them) on board with the next step. I’d also encourage you to ask the missing parent, “What new questions do you have for me?”
Each of those strategies is simple, effective, and probably not being utilized by most of your competitors.
If you’d like to talk more about something I said in this article I’m happy to do it. Go ahead and send me a note at jeremy@dantudor.com
And if you found this article helpful, please forward it to someone else on your campus who could also benefit from reading it.