The University of the Pacific in Stockton is one of more than 100 colleges and universities that have tried to boost their applicant pool by using a new marketing gimmick that borrows from the playbook of credit card companies, the New York Times reports.
The story details how the colleges have hired one marketing company – Virginia-based Royall & Company – to send out fast-track application packets to high schoolers.
The packets go to lists of high school students who scored well on a litany of tests. These “preferred customers” get a range of offers – waived application fees, a free pass on essay questions and a three-week guaranteed response time, for example.
The idea is to increase the size and quality of the applicant pool – both to get higher-performing students and to boost the university’s profile on U.S News and World Report’s closely watched rankings, the story says.
University of the Pacific used a particularly slick marketing tactic: It “waived” the application fee for preferred applicants, even though there is, in fact, no application fee for anyone at the university:
Eduardo Garnica, 19, of Sacramento, said he had expected to attend the University of California, Davis, until he received a 'Distinctive Candidate' application from the University of the Pacific, 50 miles away in Stockton.
'I hadn’t been that interested in going there,' he said. 'But they made it easy.'
Mr. Garnica said he had been captivated immediately by the words 'waived application fee' and 'no required essay!' on the bright orange envelope. Inside, a cover letter congratulated him for having 'earned an opportunity that is reserved for only a select few high-priority students.' (In truth, he was one of 30,000 who got the letter.)
He said he was flattered enough to visit, liked what he saw and was later accepted. He enrolled as a freshman this past fall.
Mr. Garnica said he was enjoying the university so much that he was willing to forgive a white lie in its marketing campaign – there is no application fee for anyone applying to Pacific, and thus no fee to waive.
The Times story didn't publish names of the more than 100 colleges and universities that have hired Royall for similar campaigns. But most of the anecdotes in the article are about private institutions, and it would come as no surprise if the majority of the colleges on the list were private.
A 2009 report from the enrollment management firm Noel-Levitz found that private colleges and universities spent the most to bring in new undergraduates. Their median cost per new student was $2,143.
By comparison, the median recruiting cost per new student at four-year public institutions was $461.
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