An emerging need in the college search process is the desire for belonging and community. Prospective students and families place the requirements high on their priority list. They’re online, searching for information, emotional support, and advice from people who live and look like them, wondering if they'll be welcomed and feel like they belong at the school they choose. In the post-pandemic world, conversations related to college admissions and belonging skyrocketed, with more mentions in 2024 than any of the previous four years. Finding the right fit institution is front of mind for students and their families through the decision process.
A partnership with Jeff Selingo for his book Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right For You, prompted us to explore recent online college admissions conversation. The insights and themes we uncovered prompted us to return to our analyses of the college decision-making journey over the past ten years.
Jeff Selingo’s book guides students and families to look beyond elite schools by identifying seven measurable dimensions of a “good school” that most rankings don’t capture. Campus Sonar developed actionable strategies from our research to help campuses improve their student-centric approach by focusing on recruiting and enrolling students based on individual fit, ensuring future success for students and sustainable institutions.
Actionable strategy
Improve your sense of community
The theme of belonging and community has grown year over year throughout our decade-long research, but especially within the context of mental health, cultural fit, and student support services. Cultural fit has many different meanings and is a very personal experience. Student support services might include an institution's access to healthcare, mental health services, and campus safety, both physical security and personal security.
Campus Sonar’s comprehensive recommendation is to work toward improving your sense of community, specifically with the general population. Knowing the importance of belonging, campuses need to show how students build a sense of community among themselves.
Take action: Market the human experience
Build awareness around the relationships, mentorship, and connections on campus to emphasize the sense of community.
Enrollment leaders at a public university in the Southeast wanted to understand how belonging drives undergraduate demand and drives positive enrollment outcomes.
Strategic support
With enrollment growth as a top priority, the campus sought to understand the perception of belonging and evolve how their community demonstrated belonging. A social intelligence analysis of the theme within the current student audience provided insights that helped the enrollment team support campus communicators. The findings revealed messaging opportunities to recruit and enroll a diverse first-year class in two dominant areas—mental health and student involvement. The teams used strategies such as leveraging ambassadors to share stories and increase prospective student engagement, curating student-generated content for storytelling and social media, and encouraging ambassadors to engage in subreddit conversations to build awareness of mental health and student support resources on campus, strengthening their culture of belonging.
Take action: Foster campus engagement
Create space for purposeful interactions across your campus so students have safe spaces to build meaningful relationships.
A regional public university in the South needed support building team capacity and incorporating strategic insights. They wanted to better leverage social media to create organic interest and shape the story their campus tells.
Strategic support
The university’s communications team uses social intelligence to support their brand health strategy, giving them a stronger understanding of their brand equity including how their strong sense of community is one of their areas of brand power. Social intelligence insights demonstrate how their audience responds positively to big moments as well as everyday lifestyle content. The team leans into this authenticity and highlights experiences that advance campus affinity and elevate the community dynamic we consistently see in their brand story. Capturing more in-the-moment content is a way to capture the day-to-day spirit of the campus and nurture positive feelings.
With increasing enrollment, it’s noteworthy students still credit the campus for their sense of community. The team uses actionable strategies from social intelligence to maintain their campus values. To maintain their differentiators, they amplify mentions or stories that highlight the strong sense of community. This is particularly helpful as students weigh their options within the state and beyond.
Take action: Understand perception of campus community
Use social intelligence to understand perceived versus actual student support, ensuring what you believe is true about your student support is what students actually say about it.
A medium-sized, highly ranked public university known for its “small feel” and close community wanted to understand and shape their current perception.
Strategic support
In assessing their brand equity, campus leadership learned their assumptions that the perception and experience of the campus were not validated with social intelligence. Historically leaders believed the campus was seen as “too rigorous,” but social intelligence findings revealed conversations where individuals talk about rigor alongside the level of community support and available resources, differentiators that established rigor as a positive factor.
The campus was recognized for their distinction of having a “small college” atmosphere. Students mentioned support and opportunities to connect with peers, aligning with institutional values of belonging and flourishing. The university leverages these attributes as differentiators with prospective audiences seeking a public research university with opportunities for personal connection.
More actionable strategies
