Small Colleges : ‘Marketing’: a Sales Pitch for Students

Bill Morris, a prep school counselor from Watertown, Conn., enjoyed a respite from cold weather last week on an all-expenses-paid trip to Southern California.

He wasn’t here to appear on a TV game show and hasn’t won any contests lately. He does, however, have something to say about the college plans of several dozen bright students, and for that, nine small colleges in the Los Angeles area were willing to fly him here for a visit. Morris was here with 28 other counselors from around the nation to take a look at colleges that “you’re not going to read about on the Sunday sports page,” as one official put it.

These schools, stretching from Occidental College in Los Angeles to the University of Redlands, have to fight hard for new students, and it’s no wonder. Most will admit only students with extremely good academic records. And they charge them an average of $14,000 a year.

‘Sticker Shock’

“We do have a problem with ‘sticker shock,’ ” said Fred Zuker, admissions director at Pomona College in Claremont, although grants and loans reduce the cost for many, if not most, students.

Still, California has a host of well-financed, highly rated state universities where students can enroll for a fraction of the cost of a private school. But the small colleges also say they have something special to offer: the best in undergraduate education. Unlike the University of California, these colleges have small classes and a faculty whose first commitment is teaching, not research and scholarship. And since most students live on campus, the colleges have a sense of community that is lacking at commuter institutions.

Each year, however, the competition for new students seems to grow more intense, both because of the high cost of private education and of what college officials refer to as the “problem of the shrinking pool.” This has nothing do with cutbacks in the athletic department budget. Rather, fewer 18-year-olds are coming out of high school than a decade ago, a trend that won’t reverse until the early 1990s.

As a result, the colleges are forced to sell themselves like never before.

Matter of Marketing

“The buzz word today in college admissions is ‘marketing,’ ” said Stirling Huntley, admissions director at Caltech in Pasadena.

The colleges are striving to find a market niche for themselves, he said, a special identity that will allow students and their parents to distinguish one school from the dozen others that are bombarding them with brochures and invitations to apply. For some, the first challenge is becoming known outside the region.

“We’re always answering the ‘Harvey who?’ question,” said Duncan Murdoch, admissions director of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont.

Others are creative in explaining why a student should spend four years on their campus.

“We like to say we’re centrally isolated,” said Stephen Hankins, admissions dean at the University of Redlands near San Bernardino. “We’re close to some amazing attractions--the mountains and the desert--but we’re far away from the madding crowd.”

Caltech doesn’t exactly have a problem with finding a niche. It is, by reputation, the most intense math and science college in the nation. Last year’s freshmen class at Caltech had an average combined score of 1,440 out of a possible 1,600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the highest average in the nation.

Then why is Caltech paying for the high school counselors to come for a visit?

‘Normal College Life’

“We’re not well known at a distance. Everyone in the country seems to know of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), but many people haven’t heard of Caltech,” Huntley said. “The other message that we want to get across is that life here is not all grim, hard work and no fun. (The image of the goggled-eye math whiz or the computer nerd) is just not accurate. We have a normal group of kids who have a normal college life.”

Last week, all of the colleges got half a day to show the counselors their campus and talk up what makes them unique.

Occidental College, in the quiet Eagle Rock neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, is regarded, along with Pomona, as one of the best liberal arts colleges in California.

“We think we offer the best of two worlds. A small liberal arts college with a sense of community, but also part of a very vibrant city,” said Charlene Liebau, Oxy’s admissions director.

Walking around Occidental, one visiting counselor noted that the neat, tree-lined campus looks like the Hollywood version of a college campus, an apt observation since the college has often been used as a movie backdrop.

‘Caring’ Atmosphere

Representatives from Whittier College and Redlands talked about the diversity of their student bodies and their “caring” atmosphere.

All five colleges in Claremont--Pomona, Scripps, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna and Harvey Mudd--advertised a distinctive academic focus, but each also relied on the appeal of Claremont, whose tree-shaded streets and Victorian homes look more like New England than the San Gabriel Valley.

Pomona is the most highly selective liberal arts college in the West.

Scripps is a women’s college that emphasizes the arts.

‘A Great Combination’

“We think we offer a great combination: We’re a women’s college, but in a co-ed cluster (of colleges),” said Patricia LaCroix, Scripps admissions director.

Claremont McKenna specializes in economics, political science and international affairs.

Harvey Mudd stresses math, science and engineering.

Founded in 1963, Pitzer focused on the social and behavioral sciences, and, like many products of that decade, finds itself somewhat troubled in the 1980s. Admissions Director Paul Ranslow was hired two years ago to prop up what had been a sagging enrollment trend. Rather than downplaying Pitzer’s image as a 1960s school, Ranslow has stressed it.

“We are different. We don’t have traditional education requirements. Pitzer is a very informal place. People are on a first-name basis. No one is called ‘Doctor’ here,” Ranslow said. “It is in many ways a throwback to another era in higher education.”

Sticks to Its Mission

Ranslow said he believes that a college should stick to its mission or go out of business.

“We’re not a school for everyone, but it is a great college for the right kid: the kid who wants to be actively engaged in designing his own education, a kid who is still concerned about all the social issues,” he said. So far, Ranslow’s approach has worked, as applications have jumped in the last two years.

The Claremont schools, he said, seem to attract students who fit the personality of each campus.

“The Claremont McKenna kids want to have the Wall Street Journal read before class. Our kids (at Pitzer) don’t care about that,” he said. “Our kids care about what’s happening in Central America or about the native inhabitants of the new soccer field.”

The colleges have considered building a new playing field on an empty lot near the campuses, he explained.

Student Inquiry

“Our kids are the ones who asked, ‘Well, what about the rabbits who live there now?’ ” he said.

Finding the bright students who fit the personality of each college is a job that keeps the admissions staff on the road for a good part of the year. Through most of the fall, staff members are scouring the nation, visiting high schools and speaking at college fairs in practically every big city.

All nine colleges say at least 40% of their students are from outside of California.

Murdoch said Harvey Mudd College wants bright students who are exceptionally able in math and who “are looking for a small college of engineering and science on the West Coast.” To find those potential freshmen, Harvey Mudd’s staff runs a computer search of scores from the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, an exam taken each year by about a million high school juniors. From that huge pool, the college picks 15,000 students nationwide whose scores are high enough to meet Harvey Mudd’s entrance requirements.

“Then we bombard those kids with junk mail,” Murdoch said; in fact, the flyer is actually labeled “junk mail.” “We get a good response, up to 20%. A lot of them seem to appreciate a sense of humor. We get replies that say, ‘I’ve never heard of this Harvey Who, but send me some more information.’ ”

Mailed Brochures

All of the colleges say they rely heavily on mailing out brochures to attract students. The brochures themselves are brighter and glossier than ever. Not surprisingly, the sun always shines on campus, the grass is always green and all the buildings have character. But, in keeping with a more pragmatic era, gone are the photos of students tossing Frisbees on the quad.

Despite its humor, Harvey Mudd’s brochure pictures students with laboratory goggles and uses adjectives such as “demanding, rigorous and intensive” when describing the school. From the intensive mailing to 15,000 students, Harvey Mudd typically gets about 900 applications a year, admits about 400 and enrolls fewer than 150 freshmen.

Last week’s tour brought counselors from both public and private high schools from every region of the nation. College officials say they don’t expect an immediate payoff from the counselors’ visit. Rather, they expect to get a handful of applications from their high schools over the next five years.

Left out of the tour were the larger private universities in the area, such as USC, Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount. Murdoch, the coordinator of this year’s tour, said the small colleges exclude the bigger schools because “we’re paranoid. We don’t want (potential students) to be overwhelmed” by more impressive facilities at the big universities.

Morris, the counselor at the Taft School in Connecticut, said the tour gave him a clear impression of nine colleges that he knew before only by reputation. Selecting a college is “an emotional decision,” more akin to meeting a new friend than a rational comparison of alternatives, he said. He doesn’t push students to go to any particular college, he said, but he tries to find “the college that is the right fit for a particular kid.”

“A few of our more adventuresome kids will want to come out here to the West Coast,” he said. But, he added, that number is likely to be only five to 10 a year.

THE COLLEGES

These figures on selectivity and students at local private colleges is from the Assn. of Independent California Colleges and Universities.

SELECTIVITY SAT SCORES Number Annual Number Number Verbal Math College Students Cost Applications Enrolled Occidental 1,534 $13,687 1,600 425 550 600 Claremont 800 14,200 1,267 215 570 630 McKenna Caltech 830 15,695 1,267 194 680 760 Harvey Mudd 530 14,980 870 148 620 730 Whittier 1,024 12,502 783 340 530 555 Redlands 1,185 12,800 1,347 335 -- -- Pomona 1,338 14,660 2,005 394 600 530 Pitzer 660 14,342 636 158 500 530 Scripps 585 14,700 501 150 510 510