Can’t-miss highlights from NACAC

The NACAC national conference in Seattle was a blast! In case you missed us or want to relive some of the fun, we’re sharing 3 key highlights from our experience.

By: Rohan Thakkar

We are still buzzing from connecting with so many of you at the recent NACAC national conference in Seattle. 

It was great to meet with so many valued colleagues and partners, participate in educational sessions and conversations around pressing topics, and reinvigorate our love for helping higher education institutions engage, enroll, and support students throughout their journeys.

If you weren’t able to make it out to Seattle (or if you’re curious about some of the sites you missed), I recommend this virtual tour of downtown — powered by Full Measure which helps more than 500 higher education institutions support, engage, enroll, and retain students through mobile-first experiences (including making campus tours more relevant and accessible). Take the pre-set tour featuring nine must-see spots or personalize your tour to what you care about most. 

There was also a lot to see and learn at the event itself — from compelling presentations to solutions to critical pain points to just being able to connect in person again. 

For those of you who couldn’t make the event or who are worried they may have missed something cool, I’ve compiled a list of three highlights from NACAC (listed in no particular order).

1. Colorado State University re-envisions the campus visit experience.

Acing campus visits has never been more critical — especially when you consider the positive correlation between tour attendance and a student’s decision to apply and enroll. 

As Kelsey Stamm, Assistant Director of Recruitment at Colorado State, shared in our joint presentation, this is something they take very seriously — creating a campus visit experience that is personalized, accessible, and authentic (whether students are touring in-person or virtually) and leverages student-generated content. As a result, they’ve experienced a notable uptick in tours and student engagement and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from student leaders. 

Missed the session? Want to learn more about Colorado State’s experience? Curious how to stand something like this up at your institution? Check out our webinar on Thursday, Oct. 14 at 2 p.m. EDT. Save your spot here. 

2. Great strides are being made to improve equity and access.

There is always room to improve when it comes to equity and access in higher education — starting with those early prospective student experiences such as campus tours to improving access to information throughout the student journey all the way through to graduation day and beyond. 

For example, recent research shows 85.1% of students consider a campus visit to be of considerable importance to their college search process, yet traveling for campus visits is one of the largest barriers low-income applicants face. Not to mention a lack of access to relevant information is an all-too-common challenge that impedes matriculation. 

The Coalition for College, in particular, has done some impressive work to support lower-income, under-resourced, and/or first-generation students, and we’re proud to partner with them in increasing access to campus tours (and to have been able to connect with so many of them at our happy hour event at NACAC). 

As of Oct. 5, Coalition schools delivered nearly 28,000 tours for free through our platform — including more than 4,000 in the past week! 

Or how I like to think of it: That’s nearly 28,000 students who were able to take a campus tour who may never have been able to do so in person and who now may be able to envision a future involving a college education. 

3. There’s always a wealth of information to learn from higher education leaders.

My favorite part of any conference is getting to meet with so many people and engage in meaningful conversations. Whether we met in the hallways, at one of the sessions, or at the Full Measure booth, I was happy to connect with so many familiar faces and to meet new people as well. Conversations like these really reinvigorate us about the work we do and help us ultimately better support you. If we didn’t get a chance to connect or if you weren’t at the event but want to chat, please don’t hesitate to grab some time on our calendar. We welcome the opportunity to continue learning from all of you.

Want to learn more about how to take your campus visits to the next level? Join our webinar on Thursday, Oct. 14. Learn more and save your spot here.