Do Your Prospects Want Their Parents With Them On Their Campus Visit?
Walking around your campus with recruit and their parents is a tried and true tradition among college coaches. You might want to rethink that strategy...
The other day in a workshop we were conducting for an athletic department, we pulled up data we had collected from their most recent recruiting class that we felt their coaches needed to see.
This is what we showed them:
Basically, what we’re finding - at this college campus, and around the country for the coaches and departments we work with - is that today’s prospects want some drastic changes to the traditional campus visit that has been a staple on campuses around the country for a long, long time.
One of those longtime traditional ways to conduct a visit revolves around the idea of
parents and their son or daughter walking around together, spending all their time together. On the surface, that makes sense…they’re on campus together, it’s a family decision, so it seems to make sense to have them all together, hearing and seeing and experiencing the same things. That’s the very adult, mature way to approach the logical decision of choosing the right kind of college for their student.
The problem is we don’t see a log of ‘logical’ decisions happening lately.
However, we do see a lot of emotional and relational decisions being made. (More so on the part of the student-athlete you’re recruiting, but even the parents demonstrate that the feel and look of the college plays a part in their decision making).
So back to the graph: Why do athletes not want to walk around with their parents and share the experience with them?
When they’re apart from their parents, they get to ask questions and be themselves around their hosts, coach and other college officials they may be meeting.
Most of the time, one or both parents will dominate a conversation and speak for the athlete.
The athlete has different decision making priorities than their parents.
Digging deeper, here are some other interesting points they offer up:
54% of your visiting prospects want to separate from their parents after only 30-60 minutes.
They want to safety of their parents being with them at the start of the visit, where they tell us they ideally want to start on the athletic side of campus with the coach and some of the younger athletes on the team, but then separate.
Their advice, in general, is that the coach (you) takes the parents and talk with them, have them do the ‘official’ stuff like the admissions tour, financial aid meeting, and other traditional items on the traditional itinerary. They want to go with younger athletes on the team, and experience a typical day with them, and in general, just ‘hang out’ with them casually - minus the coach, admissions leader or their parents supervising them.
76% of prospects want to separate from their parents after two hours or less.
Just to underscore the widespread view on this, the campus these statistics came from mirror what we see on other campuses we go to where we help to reshape and improve the results from their campus visit experiences they offer up to visiting prospects.
The thing I want you to remember is that if you choose to ignore these trends and stats, you’re going to start losing on the visits you put together as you compete with other colleges for the best athletes and students.
It’s important for the parents that this happen, too.
While the athletes are getting their experience heightened by being around their future friends and teammates, and getting a feel for the place they might call home, the parents are benefitting from this separation as well:
They get to ask questions apart from their son or daughter…questions that might be hard to ask otherwise, especially those around cost, financing an education, safety on campus, and other topics that they know their child might be embarrassed or uncomfortable hearing.
As adults, we want more details. More facts. More data. We like the history of the campus, seeing great architecture, and meeting with other adults that can help us map out the path forward at that campus. Your prospect? Not so much, for the vast majority. Not all, but most.
Very important: The parents will only occasionally see their son or daughter during the visit, if it’s reformatted as the athletes say they want, which is vital because a parent will usually see their son or daughter having fun, being comfortable on their own at your college, and seeing college hosts liking being around them. That is so crucial for a parent becoming comfortable with the idea of their son or daughter coming to your school, Coach.
Even more important: After the visit, instead of trudging off together as one overwhelmed, tired family who has heard, seen and experienced the same thing, they tend to talk more and have more energy: The parents got what they wanted, and the athletes did as well. And because they haven’t heard, seen and experienced the same thing, they share their experiences and information they learned on the visit. Our research is showing that this has a really positive effect on the family, compared to the old, traditional way of conducting a campus visit.
All of this is optional, of course, but the stats and feedback we’re getting strongly suggest coaches assess the way they conduct campus visits. There are more elements you can and should factor in to the way it’s changed, of course, but starting with this is a great first step if you want to differentiate yourself from other visits the prospect will go on.