Don’t Forget To Ask Students About This Topic

After more than a decade of studying how students make their college decisions, I can tell you that the location of your school – not just how close (or far away) it is to a student’s home, but also the town and area that surrounds your campus, as well as the part of the country it’s in, matters a great deal.

Students come up with a vision for what they think they want, and if your school’s location doesn’t completely match with their vision, most aren’t going to openly share their concern(s) with you.

Instead, if your college or university has other ‘must-haves’ and things that peak their interest, students will often apply and proceed like it’s not that big a deal.

Spoiler alert! It is a big deal, and it’s going to be a challenge for you to yield that student if you don’t intentionally work to uncover their concern(s) about your school’s location early in the process.

The key as I’ve shared in other articles involves asking direct questions. Here are a few location specific ones that continue to work well:

“What kinds of activities do you like to do with your friends?”

“What kind of college location do you feel would be the wrong type of place for you?”

“What’s one thing that gets you excited about where our school is located?”

“Why does our location seem like it would be a good fit for you?”

If a student stumbles over their words or offers a very generalized and nonspecific answer, that should be a red flag. I strongly encourage you to make a note of it and be sure to ask follow-up questions so you can figure out if your school is under serious consideration, or is just one of many on their list.

To reiterate, I want you to assume that every rising senior or new transfer inquiry is going to have a potential concern or question related to your school’s location.

Make it a priority to ask them for their opinion and thoughts about that topic early in the process. You’ll be happy you did.

If you found this article helpful, go ahead and forward it to someone else on your campus who could also benefit from reading it. You can also encourage them to sign up for my weekly newsletter.