Social Networking Comes to College Admissions

Admish is a new social website aimed at everyone involved in the college admissions process.

Student - The ability to search for information about different schools and connect with admissions officers, guidance counselors, and other students at member institutions.

Parent - Play a more active role in the college admissions process by helping their child shape their online profile and keeping in closer contact with their child’s guidance counselor.

Admissions Officer -  Get a better picture of the students applying to their school by letting them check out their profiles, blog entries, and communicating with them directly.

Educator - Connect with a community of peers to share resources to help guide students through the admissions process.

I think the idea of connecting all the pieces of the admission process together is a step in the right direction. What I don't see a real paradigm shift in the way the process is being done. The profile pages just look like extended resumes. This is good because it gives the other players more data to work with, but it is annoying and counterproductive to have students fill out yet another profile online. I think more aggregation is the key.   

Comments

[Steven Snedeker]

Great idea, but I don't see the students or the Admissions/Educators buying into this. The students because I don't see the "fun" aspect of filling out this profile. The admissions/educators because let's face it the Admissions/Educators are from a different generation, and most really aren't jumping into the social networking craze. I think if they had incorporated this into Facebook they may have a better chance of succeeding. On top of all this look at all the new companies, and products in the Web 2.0 craze, there are thousands of sites out there that Admish has to compete with to get any of attention from users.

I really hope they are successful, because there aren't many social networking sites out there that center the attention on education, in particular the admissions aspect. Not only that if the administrators see something positive coming out of social networking they may be more likely to embrace the concept.