Surveys Results Are Never What You Expect

People amaze me.

I often like to think that I've got a pretty good handle on people and what they think about things that relate to me. However, I'm learning that every time I think that I should survey them for their actual thoughts and bring myself down a peg or two.

These are two surveys we recently placed into our newsletters that we send out, one to high school students around the country and another to high school counselors around the country. I would have thought that the results would have come in about the same, but that wasn't so! The top poll is from the students and the bottom poll is the same poll taken of counselors.

What does this say about the perception high school students have about college? I wonder if being in the "real world", as the counselors are, they have a more pragmatic view of higher education than students do, leading them to feel less education is necessary to be competitive in today's workforce? Or is it an "at least" kind of thing, where the counselors feel that students need "at least" two years of higher education to be competitive (and of course more doesn't hurt either)? Add on top of that my answer would have been "none of the above" as I'm a huge

advocate for graduate school! (Of course it's not for everyone but I've enjoyed my graduate school experience so much more than my undergraduate coursework.)

This is where the simple answers get tough because we can only conjecture the reasoning behind it, but I am absolutely blown away at the significant difference of students feeling the need for a four year degree.

I would actually like to see the poll results of one more group- current college students. But then, I wonder if the response would again be significantly different between students attending a two year or four year school, or even public or private school. And I wonder how many of the students who are attending a two year school had counselors who answered two years to the question.

Unfortunately for me, as what usually happens, is this survey created more questions for me than it answered!

Any thoughts on these results?

Moving Along With Technology

We recently sent out a survey to about 4,800 high school counselors asking them about our website and their web usage when helping kids find colleges.

What truly, truly surprised me was the amount of responses I received (huge thank you to all of the counselors who took the two minutes to fill it out!) and how many of those responses said that they do not use the web to help students find a college. My gut instinct was to say "no way!" but after I thought about it I wondered how many of the counselors just aren't comfortable with it was an information medium. This article about a Freshman English prof also made me think more about this.

However, glaring in the face of this is the amount of kids who don't know the world B.G. (before Google) and to whom the web is the first place to turn when learning about anything. Last week I made the mistake (I think) of asking the middle and high school kids I coach if anyone knew what the weather was supposed to be the next day. Before I could blink almost every kid had a cell phone in hand and was pulling up the weather channel on the web. Whoa! I was just curious if anyone had listened to the radio or seen it on the news the night before... silly outdated me. But the kids seemed to only accept the latest most up to date information which they would find on the web.

I think it works this way with colleges too. Beyond sites like we have at Anycollege, the actual college websites themselves provide a wealth of up to date information from the classes being offered the next semester, the latest scores from the football team or what the upcoming season is for the Theatre department. These are as important to know, I think, as what majors the college offers or simply what sports it is known for.

Adapting to new technologies and/or strategies to reach students isn't always the easiest but it can be effective. A large reason for my personal Facebook page was to be accessible on the social network to my students when working at the college. I didn't have a lot of faith in it, but sure enough I would get 2 AM questions on things I don't think they were OK sending me at my "official" email address. (Nothing inappropriate, in fact often they were pleas for help with personal issues such as housing, etc.) However it gave the students another way in which to connect to me that was more comfortable to them. I think it might be something like this with web searches too. If counselors can take advantage of all of the info that is out there on colleges it might help the student make a truly good decision by choosing the college with the best overall fit rather than one that just offers the major/sport he/she wants to play.

Students... Any thoughts? Parents? Counselors? Recruiters?? Anyone???