Adaptive Path President Peter Merholz recently started blogging at Harvard Business about the customer experience-driven business. In addition to being credited with coining the term “blog,” Merholz has worked with a wide range of clients in the areas of user experience, strategy, and design.

In his first post, Merholz writes: “…this isn’t about money — in my work, the biggest impact I’ve seen a customer experience mindset have is to help companies understand how they can better orchestrate existing elements to realize new value….This is about choreographing what you already have (technologies, people, offerings) to better respond to your customers’ needs and wants.”

Adapative Path’s clients are much more likely to be companies and corporations, but it occurred to me that you could substitute “students” for “customers” in the above. And in these economic times, who wouldn’t be on board with taking what you already have and better aligning it with your students’ goals and needs?

In his most recent post, Merholz examines how businesses see their customers and, unfortunately, how little they often understand them.

About working on a project with a large bank, Merholtz writes: “Buying financial products is challenging, because unlike physical goods, it’s hard to define what you want ahead of time….

“We realized that customers must satisfy three sets of requirements — functional (does the product meet my basic needs); intellectual (through comparison, am I confident I’m getting the best deal); and, crucially, emotional (could I have a relationship with this bank?).”

Again, drawing a parallel with the challenge of college selection: Does the college meet my basic needs (functional)? Through comparison, am I confident I’m getting the best university for me (intellectual)? Could I have a relationship with this college (emotional)?

The bank wanted to drive all applications for new products online, according to Merholz, but researching and listening to the customers revealed that they still wanted to be able to have a human relationship, either in person or on the phone. Continuing to provide that contact opportunity was a better strategy.

The bottom line here is that it’s not just who your customers/students are, but how they behave. And have you aligned your institutional processes with actual behaviors, not with labels and preconceived notions about your customers/students? Is your admissions strategy meeting the functional, intellectual, and emotional concerns of potential students?

A recent article in the Chronicle’s blog highlights a missed opportunity in college recruiting.

The piece focuses on a study by a Stanford economist who found that high-achieving, low-income high school students are less likely to apply to selective colleges, despite having the qualifications to be accepted. These students do attend college, but usually at institutions that are below their abilities.

Ms. [Caroline M.] Hoxby and Christopher N. Avery, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, obtained a huge cache of data from the College Board, which allowed them to analyze the entire population of students who took the SAT in five recent years. The data included test scores, high-school grades, and the names of the colleges where the students asked the College Board to send their scores (which is a close proxy for where the students actually applied).

The two scholars used a variety of methods, including block-level census data, to estimate each student’s household income. In their paper they define a family as “low income” if its income is below the 30th percentile, which is around $28,000. They define a student as high-achieving if the student had combined SAT scores above 1200, a high-school grade point average of B-plus or better, and at least one Advanced Placement score of 4 or 5 (or an equivalently high score on an SAT subject-area test).

In one typical recent year, Ms. Hoxby said, there were roughly 21,000 high-achieving students from low-income families. But more than 60 percent of those students did not make any “ambitious applications,” the study found.

Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Avery regarded an application as ambitious if the college’s median combined SAT score was no more than five percentiles below the student’s own score. “Notice that that’s a very broad definition,” Ms. Hoxby said. “I’m not saying that you’re applying to a school where you would be below the median.”

But even under that generous definition, Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Avery found that a large majority of those students did not make any ambitious applications. Instead, they typically applied to nonselective (or only slightly selective) public institutions close to their homes.

One of the crucial factors the study found was geography: low-income students from rural areas are less likely to apply to ambitious schools. Students in these areas lack guidance from teachers, counselors, and parents in determining what schools to consider.

This isn’t an audience that’s plugged in to traditional college marketing–they require a targeted and sustained communication effort that educates them (and their families) about financial aid and about the possibilities that are out there.  But it’s a sizable group of smart, highly motivated, hard working students who just need someone to help them recognize their options.

Carol Phillips at Millenial Marketing observes that

“Gen Y says their biggest challenge is ‘busy-ness’, the sheer volume of things they want and need to do. There simply isn’t enough time to do it all. As a result, they see their lives as ‘hectic’, ‘exciting’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘fun’. However, busy-ness also is the main barrier to achieving things that are really important to them, like staying in touch with old friends, making new friends and finding time to lead a ‘balanced’ life.”

When marketing universities and colleges to high school students, there’s a tendency to hype up the high-energy, never-stand-still aspects of life on campus.  (At least, I know I’m guilty of it.)  Think of how many “24/7″ or timeline-themed viewbook concepts you’ve seen.  The point, of course, is to convey a sense of how and to what degree prospects will be engaged once they’re on campus.  “Come to our school!  Bored is the only thing that’s hard to be!”

It’s all meant to appeal to an audience that expects continual activity.  But it’s very easy to forget that this busy-ness is also a stressor.  And it’s taking a toll: anecdotal evidence and hard data indicate that the use of on-campus mental health and counseling services is climbing; we’re also seeing the growing practice of a gap year as students declare that they just need a break.

As Phillips reminds us, what students crave and what’s in short supply is balance.  Emphasizing the ways your students step off the busy-ness treadmill, how they find balance between competing demands, also has its appeal.

This appeared in the Boston Globe on Christmas Day, so in case you missed it: Facing rising tuition here at home and more purchasing power in Canada, greater numbers of New England students are heading north of the border for college.

Colleges in eastern Canada report mounting interest this fall among high school seniors from the Northeast, with a recently stronger US dollar making already low tuition costs even more of a bargain for Americans.

Although applications for next academic year are not due for at least a month, schools from Toronto to Halifax say many students in the Boston area and throughout the region are drawn by the allure of an international college experience relatively close to home.

…

The number of Americans studying abroad has more than doubled in the past decade, and high school counselors say the influx to Canada reflects a broader trend of students attending foreign universities full time.

Since 2001, the number of American attending college in Canada has risen by 50 percent to about 9,000, according to Canadian Embassy in Washington.

Now, 9,000 students isn’t a huge number, and the recruiting efforts appear to be confined to New England, but it’s a trend worth watching. US schools appear to be behind the 8-ball on this one: Canadian colleges are heavily subsidized, making them less expensive than private schools in the US and in some cases comparable to public institutions. Add to that a simplified admissions process, schools with outstanding reputations, and (at least in the case of Toronto) fabulous urban experiences. Oh, and while they don’t qualify for financial aid, US students can receive loans from the federal government (that is, our federal government) to study in Canada.

I’m curious, though: Does anyone know the number of Canadian students studying in the US?

The full story is here.

Brad Ward at Squared Peg has discovered what appears to be an effort by College Prowler to co-opt Facebook groups for stealth marketing campaigns. This is all still sketchy, but the evidence is pointing to interns for College Prowler joining Class of XXXX Facebook groups and gaining admin rights.

What the implications of this are isn’t clear, but if you have an unauthorized Class of XXXX group on Facebook (and, of course, you do), it’s worth checking out Ward’s list of suspicious names and paying attention to this.

UPDATE: The president of College Prowler has taken responsibility (this comment was posted to Squared Peg):

Yes, College Prowler has been directly or indirectly involved with the creation of multiple Class of 2013 groups. The original purpose was to use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a free guide about their new college on our site. No employee or anyone else associated with College Prowler has used these groups to send out messages or wall posts.

Until about an hour ago, I was unaware that College Prowler was working with another company that may have been using fake aliases to create to these groups. The groups that College Prowler was responsible for creating were set up with real accounts. Here are the names that are associated with College Prowler, and they will all be removed immediately from the Class of 2013 groups(all other names are not controlled by College Prowler):
• Mark Tressler
• Ron Tressler
• Brenna Young
• Lisa Young
• Lauren Plavchek
• Jessica Lash

From a big picture perspective, having a marketing strategy using social networking sites (like Facebook) is something that is necessary to be effective in our business. We do pride ourselves on being forward thinking and aggressive. In this instance, in its current form, we have crossed the line and to reiterate, we will be removing our administrator privileges from all of these 2013 groups immediately.

Ypulse just wrapped up another Youth Marketing Mashup, and here are some of the highlights:

Youth consume local news online, too.

…They want news that impacts them, which is why I think more young people tune in or search for local stories. Sites other than MySpace and Facebook mentioned by our panel as favorites were: Colbert Nation, College Board, New York Times, CNN, MSN, Veoh, Hulu, Twitter, Wired, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Lifehacker and Gizmodo. The college students were much more like “early adopters” in their tastes than the high school students (some big socio-economic differences as well).

There are still “Tech Nots”
With all of our talk about Totally Wired youth, we forget that there are some teens who choose to not participate or unplug. We had one of these high school students on our panel. She barely used the internet for anything outside of school work. She also was one of the teens who spent the most time reading books for pleasure. She’s not on MySpace or Facebook and did not text. We also had another high school student who did not own a cell phone. I wasn’t sure if that was her preference or for financial reasons. My guess was the latter.

Communication Tools Are About Efficiency
Youth are in developmental phase in their lives where socializing with peers is what’s most important. They are also incredibly busy. When I asked the young people on our panel how they stay in touch with each other, what I heard were the usual response (IM, textbook, Facebook and some email, mostly to communicate with adults), but I also heard the repeated need to blast or communicate with “all my friends at once.” Phones are still being primarily used for voice and text, though some of these teens text more than talk (200+ text messages a day). That said, two of our college students had iPhones with data plans and one student had a music phone. As PDAs become more widespread among youth and if the price of data plans drops, I think we’ll see more young people surfing, gaming and even watching video via phone.

[...]

HBO a hit…with youth?
When I asked how they watch TV – some still watched the old fashioned way, but I also heard HBO on demand, YouTube, Colbert Nation, SNL videos (online), and “Lost” on ABC.com.

[...]

Still downloading…
Most of our panel downloads free music or movies from sites like Bit Torrent and Limewire, except for one of the college students who was busted by the RIAA (ouch). The other college students download from home (not school) for that very reason.

Ypulse is a great resource for teen and tween culture. For more highlights on their mashup, click here.