Colleges are using current students' and their parents' enthusiasm for the institution as an effective recruitment tool. Student contact with prospective students on campus visits, hometown contacts, and parent phone calls to prospective students' parents are useful strategies. Most are volunteers though some students are paid for their time as…

A study of 291 freshmen from "invisible" colleges and 239 from 6 prestigious colleges and universities and their parents investigated how the 2 sets of families with obvious different college preferences had made their choice. Geography, parental influence and approval, the "second choice" concept, and institutional…