Boston - 2/2/12: Anticipating 1,000,000 college visits in 2012, CollegeWeekLive will open its doors 365 days a year to create AlwaysON, a live channel where students and colleges meet online. CollegeWeekLive AlwaysON features weekly expert presentations, unlimited access to colleges, unlimited chat sessions, and online visits organized by both colleges and high school counselors. Speakers such as Dr. Gary Gruber, Harlan Cohen, and Ted Fiske will host monthly webcasts.
Students search for colleges every day, but are often frustrated to find they can’t have a meaningful conversation unless that college is one of the few that visit their high school. “I like being able to interact with someone live versus waiting for an answer via email or mail,” said Bri Falcon, a student in Connecticut. International and out-of-state students who can’t travel to college campuses are often left without any reasonable options.
While the largest segment of college admissions inquiries is initiated online, most colleges spend less than the cost of one traveling admissions representative online. Despite $300,000 to $3 million spent annually on staff and travel to high schools, colleges reach just 10% of high schools and reach an even smaller fraction of college-bound students through visits to high schools. Sending admissions staff to visit high schools is expensive and time consuming, and is not effective in a wired world.
What’s more, high schools may feel that college admission visits disrupt class schedules and create a scheduling burden for guidance staff that is overworked and undermanned. High school counselors argue that students connect to a mere handful of colleges through these visits, when they should be considering a wider range of higher education possibilities.
CollegeWeekLive offers instant gratification in an AlwaysON world. Colleges can now engage with students actively researching their school and answer admissions questions easily and personally online. Colleges can now build a connection with prospective students at every step of the admissions process via CollegeWeekLive, from initial awareness to evaluation, to application and final enrollment.
With CollegeWeekLive AlwaysON, any of the 20,000 high schools in the CollegeWeekLive Counselor Network may request online visits with colleges that their students have expressed interest in, eliminating the need for onsite visits. Counselors will now be notified of which colleges are available at CollegeWeekLive each week, and if a member college isn’t available, counselors can request an online visit. “It’s been a delight to watch my students grow as they chat with admissions counselors and current students live,” said Jennifer Restauri, a counselor in Texas.
Likewise, CollegeWeekLive participating colleges can schedule their own online visits with high schools anywhere worldwide, and reach CollegeWeekLive’s current audience of 450,000 students in 191 countries while also taking advantage of CollegeWeekLive’s established calendar of online admissions events.
Colleges have been quick to take advantage of CollegeWeekLive AlwaysON. The following universities are among the initial members of the exclusive beta launch.
• Bowling Green State University
• Colorado Mesa University
• CUNY, Hunter College
• Dallas Baptist University
• FIDM
• Florida Atlantic University
• Holy Names University
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Kent State
• Kettering University
• Knox College
• Lawrence Technological University
• LIU Brooklyn
• Michigan Technological University
• Mississippi State University
• Mount St. Mary's University
• Oregon Institute of Technology
• Pepperdine University
• Stony Brook University
• Syracuse University
• University of California, Davis
• University of California, Santa Barbara
• University of Chicago
• University of Houston
• University of Idaho
• University of Louisville
• University of Melbourne
• University of North Florida
• University of North Texas
• University of Oklahoma
• University of Oregon
• University of Tampa
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville
• University of Vermont
• Western Michigan University
• William Patterson University
“When students make real connections with college reps they are most likely to enroll,” said Robert Rosenbloom, president and CEO of CollegeWeekLive. “AlwaysON will enable colleges to have more live conversations than ever before. Colleges will create compelling events on the fly and get more students to respond at every stage of the process.” AlwaysON member colleges can now leverage unlimited text and video chat to schedule online visits with the high schools they don’t visit.” Colleges need to be available when and where students search, and for many students that is from their smart phone. The release of CollegeWeekLive’s mobile chat application for iPhone, iPad, and Android is central to CollegeWeekLive AlwaysON. “This is the first mobile chat application designed for college admissions,” said Rosenbloom. “Students browsing for colleges while on the bus ride home will be able to chat with college representatives, providing the type of immediate response this generation expects. The seamless integration with AlwaysON enables colleges to go mobile without any additional cost.”
For more information on CollegeWeekLive and AlwaysON, please contact 617-938-6023 or colleges@collegeweeklive.com.
About CollegeWeekLive
CollegeWeekLive is the leading channel for live conversations with prospective students. Colleges can now reach far more high schools than they could visit in person, engage students in an online environment they prefer, and improve results at every stage of the enrollment process. CollegeWeekLive is an efficient channel for colleges to make real connections with students. Since 2007, hundreds of thousands of students from 191 countries have visited CollegeWeekLive to seek out expert advice on their college choice.