Blogging to show off your organization

Great article in the NY Times about student blogging at MIT. It helps prospective students get a feel for the place before applying.

Dozens of colleges — including Amherst, Bates, Carleton, Colby, Vassar, Wellesley and Yale — are embracing student blogs on their Web sites, seeing them as a powerful marketing tool for high school students, who these days are less interested in official messages and statistics than in first-hand narratives and direct interaction with current students.

Admissions officers are about as reluctant as most corporate executives. It’s that old loss-of-control issue.

“A lot of people in admissions have not been eager for bloggers, mostly based on fears that we can’t control what people are saying,” said Jess Lord, dean of admissions at Haverford College, which posted student bloggers’ accounts of their summer activities this year, and plans to add bloggers this spring to help admitted students hear about campus life. “We’re learning, slowly, that this is how the world works, especially for high school students.”

But Mr. Lord of Haverford said prospective students’ interest in the summer bloggers calmed his worries.

“High school students read the blogs, and they come in and say ‘I can’t believe Haverford students get to do such interesting things with their summers,’ ” he said. “There’s no better way for students to learn about a college than from other students.”

Students get off on the blogging:

M.I.T. chooses its bloggers through a contest, in which applicants submit samples of their writing. “The annual blogger selection is like the admissions office’s own running of the bulls,” said Dave McOwen, Mr. Jones’s successor in the admissions office, in his message inviting applications.

This year, 25 freshmen applied for four new spots, and, Mr. McOwen said, it was hard to choose.

At first, I choked on the practice of paying bloggers $10/hour. This smacks a little of surreptitious product placements. (Drink Coke!) Then it occurred to me that payment takes care of the loss of control issue. While MIT vows not to fiddle with anyone’s posts, a student who wants the job is not going to go crazy online.

The MIT admissions site:

Hey now, your company could do this. Transparency on the cheap.