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Lakeland College website earns national recognition

The admissions features on Lakeland College's website were recognized as among the most highly rated in the country by the National Research Center for College & University Admissions (NRCCUA) 7^th annual Enrollment Power Index® (EPI), a analysis of the admissions websites of more than 3,000 post-secondary institutions.

"We realize the importance of the web as a tool for student recruitment," said Lakeland President Stephen Gould. "This recognition tells us we're doing some good things. But we are always working to make sure we are on the cutting edge of offering a website that meets the needs of prospective students."

Lakeland hired its first full-time webmaster, Jason Irish, in the summer of 2004. Over the past year, the college has seen visits to its website increase an average of 30 percent a month from a year ago, seen page views increase an average of 50 percent a month from the year prior and Lakeland was among the first colleges or universities in the country to incorporate student weblogs (or blogs) into their Admissions site, which netted Lakeland mention in a recent Wall St. Journal article on college blogs.

The NRCCUA research-based study rates how well the functionality and design of college and university admissions websites provide information to potential students and move them from prospect to applicant. The study graded the sites for each institution on a 100-point scale. Lakeland was one of only 130 institutions that received an A

"We congratulate Lakeland for having one of the top admissions related websites," said Don Munce, President of NRCCUA, a non-profit education research organization based in Lee's Summit, Mo., which serves as a communications link between college-bound high school students and public and private colleges and universities "

Prospective college students are Internet-savvy, and they have come to expect the admissions sections of university websites to provide critical information to help them make decisions. As Lakeland has recognized, a quality website can now be the difference between a lost prospect and a new student."

The study examined 28 different criteria that are divided into five main categories.

1. Prominence of an admissions office link on the institutions home page (10.35 possible points).
2. Admissions web page design and ease of navigation (28.01 possible points).
3. Online access to admissions materials (14.4 possible points).
4. Additional admissions information (36.39 possible points).
5. Ability to contact the admissions office (10.85 possible points).

To identify the admissions website features that have the most significant impact of potential students perception of the site, an email survey was sent to over 100,000 college-bound high school students asking them to rate admissions websites.  Next, over 3,000 sites were evaluated to identify functional features present on each site.  Statistical tests were then used to identify the functional features that were important to students and their relative importance.

Additional information on the EPI study is available at www.nrccua.org.

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