Admissions officers use Facebook to recruit prospective students

    It goes without saying that Facebook.com, which celebrated its fifth birthday yesterday, has grown from being an exclusive social network used only by matriculated college students to a near-universal communication tool. Today, Facebook hosts profiles and groups for everyone from the very young to the surprisingly old, and its ubiquity has led professional businesses and organizations to incorporate it into their practices.
    Perhaps because of their proximity to the younger set, college admissions offices have been some of the first organizations to do so, attempting to use the networking site in the hopes of attracting more prospective students to their universities. In doing so, they are capitalizing on the existing trend of admitted students creating their own class Facebook groups.
    Tufts Assistant Director of Admissions Daniel Grayson created the Tufts Class of 2013 Facebook group to provide a link between the admissions office and the university's recently admitted students. Students convene on the site to set up meeting times for those who live in the same city, discuss essay questions and answers and find other students with common interests such as music or dance, much as they would in a student-created Facebook group. The group also includes helpful links to sites that current Tufts students take for granted, such as TuftsLife and JumboAccess, so that students can learn about on-campus activities and professor reviews right away.
    This new strategy marks a clear transition from the previous method that many current Jumbos can remember of reading up on their prospective schools in insiders' guides and The Princeton Review.
    Freshman Adam Aronson recalled that when he joined the similar Tufts Class of 2012 group, it was helpful for getting many of his questions answered about starting school at Tufts.
    "I do think these groups are a good idea. They are very effective at getting questions answered," Aronson said. "It also makes you feel like you're part of a community before you get to Tufts. The process of pre-orientation and orientation can be really confusing, and it's good to have a couple people going through the same thing you are."
    Other students have found the group useful, although they have used it more as a source of information than as an arena for interaction and communication. Freshman Jordana Laks, who took a year off before starting at Tufts, joined the Tufts Class of 2012 Facebook group in order to see what other people were saying about their upcoming Tufts experience.
    "I guess I joined to meet other people that were going to be in my grade, but I didn't really talk to any of them on Facebook," Laks said. "I read the threads that everyone posted, even though I never posted anything."
    This year, however, the admissions office is hoping to make Facebook groups an interactive admissions tool. They paired with current students on Facebook to create a group called "I'm Interested in Tufts University," which reaches out to prospective students by giving them a chance to ask questions of current students. Grayson also heads this project, but most of the activity within the group results from the effort of current students.
    One of the administrators of the group, freshman Eileen Guo, knew Grayson from her own admissions process and wanted to participate in the group.
    "The main goal of the group is to try to show people that the admissions process is not scary where officers are these really intimidating people," Guo said. "The group is also a more direct way for prospective students to talk to current students."
    In addition to connecting prospective students to current ones who can answer their questions about Tufts, the group showcases the many student blogs that Tufts sponsors, such as sophomore Pam Roy's exploration of the social world at Tufts. Another administrator of the group, senior Renee Birenbaum, stressed that the group exists to provide information to students about areas of Tufts that they wouldn't receive on a campus tour or in an information session.
    "We try to stay away from telling kids what their chances are and helping with their applications," Birenbaum said in an email to the Daily. "We talk about professors, the social life, activities, the political climate, etc. I think these areas are so much more crucial to forming an opinion of a school than in what year we were given the cannon."
    The group now has just over 2,000 members.