The Guilfordian

Issue date: 10/26/07 Section: News

Last year the decision was made that Guilford could no longer participate in three of the four Colleges That Change Lives (CTCL) recruitment tours.

According to Randy Doss, Vice-President for Enrollment and Campus Life, the primary reason is financial.

"When you choose to be a part of the program, there are five programs you need to attend, and you are required to do all five," Doss said. "Some aren't good markets and you still have to go to them. Even if Raleigh is a good market, you still have to ask 'Is Raleigh worth Memphis?' Is Atlanta worth Birmingham? Well, we don't get any applications from Birmingham."

Guilford is able to select which regional tour they will participate in, but once they are committed to a tour, they are required to tour in all of the cities that are selected by CTCL from that region. The reason for this rule is due to shared costs for each tour and promotion of the tours by region that list all of the colleges attending.

According to Marty O'Connell, the Executive Director of CTCL, each regional tour is advertised with a list of colleges that will have representatives available, and "it would be very disorganized and ineffective for the families who come to the tour if some of the colleges advertised were not present."

Last spring O'Connell met with Doss to convince him to reconsider this decision.

"I wanted to find out what CTCL might be able to do to enable Guilford to travel in spite of budget constraints," O'Connell said. "I shared the advantages of being a part of the tour and the benefits other colleges are getting because of the face-to-face contact and how it changed their enrollment and enabled them to reach the kind of students that are great fits for their admission."

Last year Guilford only participated in the northeastern tour, but was not present at the August and September tours on the West coast, in the Midwest and the South.

"I'm trying to be a good steward of the college's resources, and sometimes we have to make really hard decisions" Doss said. "We have chosen to continue to participate in CTCL's in cities where we have a better-than-average chance of enrolling students."

Doss said that "Guilford has no intention of permanently dropping out of CTCL tours. We will look at each and every tour to see if fits into our recruitment plan, budget and timing." However, according to Senior Associate Advisor of Admission Susan Bagley, plans for tours in 2008 or future tours have not been made. After the families' responses to Guilford's absence at the August southern tour, which included Houston, Austin, Atlanta, Raleigh, Memphis, St. Louis and Tulsa, O'Connell called Doss to let him know that this was a missed opportunity.

"Families were disappointed that they were not able to speak with a Guilford representative. I told them that it did not mean that Guilford is not interested in them but that every college has to make budget decisions," O'Connell said. "I faced the same situation in all tours, but it was magnified in the south since Guilford attracted more students since these cities were closer to Greensboro."

"When we started doing these tours, we gave up much of the traditional travel that we had been doing to invest in the CTCL tours," said Bagley, who has been the Guilford representative at most of the CTCL tours for 10 years. "But then we fell back into traditional kinds of travel." Finances

According to O'Connell, each tour costs an average of $2000 for each college in order to share the cost of the programs, in addition to their own travel expenses like hotel and flight costs.

"Anyone who knows about airfare knows that adds up quick," Doss said. "And when we go on the tour, they don't have the representatives stay in budget hotels. The program is run in $200-a-night places."

However, O'Connell said that by staying at a cheaper hotel you are not necessarily saving money, because the hotel prices are linked to the prices of renting the ballrooms and meeting rooms.

"When you negotiate, you get better rates on reserving spaces if you also reserve a certain number of rooms in that same hotel," O'Connell said.

Bagley said that expensive hotels are necessary at times to secure the space needed to accommodate growing audiences.

"We're somewhat limited because our audiences have become so large," Bagley said. "We need meeting space for 500 people, and must book the 40 sleeping rooms to book the meeting room."

Even though Bagley and O'Connell realize that the tour is costly, they believe that it should be a priority because CTCL has become a prime source of recruitment for the CTCL colleges.

"The Financial rationale of many colleges who value the tour is that if they enroll one full paid student it more than covers the total costs of the tours," O'Connell said. "Colleges are enrolling many students which they might not attract without the benefit of the individual contact these programs provide."

According to O'Connell, over the past 10 years there have been colleges with tight budgets that have added tours because of the great results, such as Millsap, Lynchburg and Birmingham Southern.

Nancy Sinex, Director of Admissions at Earlham College (a Quaker college in Richmond, Ind.) has found the tour to be essential in Earlham's recruitment efforts.

"By Guilford's absence during the tour programs, the college misses the opportunity to make personal contact with new prospective students and with students who may have previously been in touch with Guilford to obtain information," Sinex said.

Sinex said that Earlham has never doubted the great results of their investment in the tour.

"Earlham and almost all of the schools have benefited from increased applications and enrollment, due in part to the exposure of our schools during the tours, from the CTCL Web site and certainly from the book," Sinex said. "The tours have allowed us to have personal contact (develop relationships) with prospective students and their parents. These connections are one of the best ways for both schools and students to determine fit." Competition and Marketing

Campus Ministries Coordinator Max Carter used to serve as an admissions counselor at Earlham College, which is also one of the 40 CTCL schools.

"The Office of Admission, I believe, is concerned that the kind of schools we are in competition with on this tour - like Earlham - have far more resources and, therefore, a better ability to attract students with their larger endowments and better facilities," Carter said. "But we can stand on our own credentials. We don't have facilities or an endowment as big but we have programs and people and a history that if marketed and if explained will attract students."

O'Connell agreed and said that "Every one of the 40 colleges in CTCL has some advantages and some disadvantages, and if that wasn't the case then no one would bother investing in the tour at all."

Sophomore Robin Nicholson is a Quaker from Richmond, who chose to attend a Quaker school and picked Guilford instead of Earlham.

"I chose Guilford over Earlham because it isn't literally in my back yard and it is in a warm and beautiful place," Nicholson said. "Greensboro has a great relationship with Guilford and its students, and Guilford academics are more suited to all types of learners. Also, the Quaker youth community, especially QLSP, is better than what Earlham offered. Earlham was more serious and Guilford seemed like a place where I could learn and have fun."

Guilford Alumna Carly Matteson '06 of Seattle, Wash., learned about Guilford from the CTCL book, but meeting Susan Bagley as the Guilford representative at the tour led her to make Guilford her final choice.

"I was attracted to Guilford because it is a school rooted in strong ethical beliefs and convictions which I saw were transmitted and embodied in the way the school was run and in the character of the students," Matteson said. "I was also very attracted to the fact that such a large percentage of the student population comes from out of state. That creates an enormous amount of community on campus, which is exactly what I was looking for."

Nicholson and Matteson, as well as others, choose Guilford because of its unique characteristics that go beyond the facilities the school has to offer.

"We can compete for students by using the strength of what makes us unique, and not based on who we would like to become," Carter said. "There are very few Guilfords out there. I'd love to have the luxury of huge numbers of applications and a reduced acceptance rate; but if you do that by becoming a different kind of college, then you lose your competitive edge."

By neglecting to market Guilford's unique qualities, which are highlighted in the CTCL tour, Guilford would not be able to compare with more traditional schools like N.C. State and Elon.

"They are always going to have more glitz and glamour because of Division I sports, Greek life, better facilities and more pre-professional options and focus on business," Carter said. "If we pretend to be like them by presenting a different face to the student body, folks will come and see right through that."

As a matter of fact, the philosophy of collaboration that the CTCL schools have works to each college's benefit and makes competition less intense.

"As we are talking with students we are trying to help them decide if the institution we represent is the best fit for them," O'Connell said. "There are times when the counselors behind the table say this is not the college for you but that you should look at others, and they will make recommendations. This gives the families that come on the tour a sense of trust and authenticity." Attracting the "Wrong" Types of Students

Besides issues with finances and competition, Carter said that he has heard the suspicion that "part of the reason that Guilford is not participating in the tour is that CTCL attracts students that are not beneficial to the college."

"I fundamentally disagree," Carter said. "People who have been attracted to Guilford through CTCL have been students who want a transformational educational experience. They want a college that stands for something and an education that will do more than connect them with this network of grad schools and professions."

Carter also said that CTCL has not only attracted students who want that type of education, but also their families.

"There are families that I've run across at Guilford who are quite well-to-do," said Carter, "but they want their students to have an education that will equip them to have a more meaningful life than they have had, given their own experience of living life on the fast track."

According to Doss, motivation is the key ingredient that the admission department looks for in applicants.

"What we have to do is find people who are motivated and willing to do the work," Doss said. "Just because they have high SAT scores or a good GPA doesn't mean they have the motivation over time - for eight, nine or 10 semesters."

Debbie Daniels, Matteson's mother who attended two of the tours and read the book, believes that CTCL is a great way to find these students.

"Too many college applications rely on standardized tests which do not look at the person as a whole," Daniels said. "When Carly was applying to colleges, these things were not good measures to me for someone to make a decision about her. A major thing that attracted me to the CTCL schools is that they look at the whole student, in addition to their grades."

False interpretations of the title of "Colleges That Change Lives" by Loren Pope have added to the sentiment that CTCL attracts those whose lives are not yet experienced and enriched enough to be at Guilford.

"The title of the book wasn't chosen as Loren Pope was writing the book, but as he did the interviews more and more students said to him 'this place changed my life,'" O'Connell said. "It was the students' quotes that led him to select this title because every one of the 40 colleges can cite students that can say their college allowed them to grow as a person. That's the life-changing experience."

Matteson is one of many who said they left Guilford feeling that their lives truly were changed for the better.

"I am very grateful for the tour because it led Carly to Guilford where she was regularly challenged by being partners with radically different people, and she learned to get rid of her frustration and find things she had in common with them," Daniels said. "She made great friends through this experience, and her judgment meter really diminished. She saw herself as much more open."

"By the time I graduated, Guilford had also taught me that … I need to become a global citizen aware of more than just myself," Matteson said. "It was this basic principal which pushed me to start traveling three months after graduation."

Matteson is currently in Nepal working in health care with underprivileged children in the Himalayas.

"In this past year that I have been abroad, I can honestly say that I feel that I have learned 10 times more about myself," said Matteson, "and have received an education from the global community, which is something that no institution could ever provide."

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