New services that assist prospective students in choosing the next step in their education, both institution and program(s), are increasingly making their mark. Many of them strive to be the go-to, most helpful online service for prospects.
While high school guidance counselors serve a critical interpersonal role for many high school students, especially from an angle of building confidence, many independent students might be just as at home with a web-based solution that aides them in choosing their future institution and courses.
Many of the tools being introduced of late might very well be the tip of the iceberg in a shift in the way some students go about making these decisions. With all that’s available to those willing to independently do research online, this is a trend that’s gradually been occurring for years, but a recent slew of services have started to up the ante. I’ve noted some of the most common themes being used to attract prospective students to using online services.
Filtering Options
Launched last month, Fatminds offers interest-based search options for prospects to learn about and/or choose the next step in their education. Categories (areas of study), institutions themselves, location, and price are just a few of the ways users can filter results. And even though the company is just starting out, Fatminds claims to have the most comprehensive collection of educational programs on the web, which includes courses, degrees, seminars, and webinars. By signing up for an account – which they make incredibly easy to do by offering options via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more – users gain access to more features, including reviews, the ability to filter by price, and questions and answers.
According to this TechCrunch article, Fatminds has 10,000 institution and courses in Massachusetts and California. While the focus is on adult learners, the site may certainly be of service to prospective traditionally-aged students, too. Fatminds is in its infancy and shows a lot of promise. But I can’t help to feel there are a little too many Beta-like aspects of the service that prevent it from being looked at as a go-to player at this point.
One of the aspects that bothered me was even though institutions may sign up to partner with Fatminds and are invited to do this right on the homepage, there isn’t much information for this audience on the generic contact us page that follows. I think if Fatminds wants to get more institutions around the nation involved, they must cater almost as much to this audience as they cater to the prospective student audience. Features such as questions/answers depend on them having colleges and universities directly involved.
So what can you do? Though the service is new, it wouldn’t hurt to contact Fatminds to see what they have to say!
Reviews and Advice Hubs
Think about how much you consult reviews online. Whether it’s for a product at Amazon or a restaurant on Yelp, reviews by other people just like you significantly affect your decisions. It’s no different in higher education, as prospective students are eager to hear what their peers have to say. While the online institution review space is fairly fragmented, with some notable players being College Prowler, Students Review, and The UniversityReview, one of the biggest mainstays with an enormous amount of reviews and a specialized network is Unigo.
Questionnaires to Help Match
Though Unigo has a unique questionnaire tool called the College Connector, DegreeSearch also offers a dead simple questionnaire to help narrow down your choices. These tests are quick ways students can drill down to eliminate the maze of institutions to choose from. Fielding questions dealing with interests, age, location requirements, and other data is a simple way to achieve this.
Wrap Up
These three features are just a few ways prospects dissect information for themselves about colleges and universities online. Besides the brief tactics mentioned above, it is also best to go through some of the processes above to see how your institution comes out – at least compared to some of your closest competitors. If it’s not an issue you can directly contact the website about, think about how you can make changes so your institution is reflected in a better light.
And though we started out comparing these types of services to guidance counselors, I firmly believe these web service aren’t going anywhere. Though they have a reputation for being under-used by many, they are a reliable source of information and a fast way to get answers – from a human – on common questions related to careers, higher education and beyond.
