College Recruiters Use Student Bloggers

Chris Smith, a sophomore at Ohio Dominican University, looks at his blog in his dorm room Tuesday, May 1, 2007, in Columbus, Ohio. Smith posts lively weekly descriptions of his life as a college baseball player. He gets $20 a posting and has been unafraid to hide his preference for playing ball over going to class or criticizing professors for assigning too much homework. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato) (Kiichiro Sato - AP)

First came glossy brochures. Next, huge Web sites packed with official information. Now, relatively uncensored blogs promote elements of university life, from the climbing wall at the rec center to the size of the rolls in the dining hall, he said.

Chris Smith, a sophomore at Ohio Dominican University, posts lively weekly descriptions of his life as a college baseball player. He gets $20 a posting and has been unafraid to hide his preference for playing ball over going to class or criticizing professors for assigning too much homework.

"Being in class is literally the last place you want to be at this time of the year," he wrote on April 12.

Ohio Dominican, a small Roman Catholic college in Columbus, is among schools that decided not to allow blog readers to post comments out of fear of compromising online security.

Traditionalists say that's not a real blog. More importantly, experts say, the best student blogs demand responses.

"The very best ones are well-written, honest, authentic voices shining through and fully interactive, meaning you can knock out a response to something you read right away," said Stephanie Geyer of the consulting firm Noel-Levitz.

Allowing outside comments was a priority at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because it allows prospective students to ask questions anonymously they might not otherwise bring up, said Ben Jones, communications director for MIT's admissions' office.

He estimates 50 inappropriate comments have been deleted from more than 28,000 postings.

MIT has expanded its blogging program from three students three years ago to about 15 today. MIT didn't pay its bloggers at first, then relented when Jones saw how much work the students put in. He also worried about the credibility of paying bloggers until he saw that students were posting the good and the bad. They earn up to $40 a week.

Surveys by Noel-Levitz have found that student blogs were among the top things prospective students wanted from college Web sites.

The MIT bloggers average 15,000 to 20,000 hits per day from more than 5,000 unique visitors. Admitted students rank the blogs among the top three factors influencing their decision to attend MIT.

Repeated references in student blogs to the small-town feel of Capital University in suburban Columbus drew high school senior Tishia Richardson to the liberal arts college.

Now she's a student blogger, posting semi-rambling entries on a favorite campuswide stress reliever _ called "Wicked Wednesday" _ and praising the suburb's main drag for its multiple coffee shops.

"Sometimes it's good to know about the little quirks of campus or what people are doing you wouldn't get on a regular campus visit," said Richardson, 18, a freshman majoring in social work.

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On the Net:

Ball State University: http://www.bsu.edu/blogcaster2/michael/

MIT: http://www.mitadmissions.org/blogs.shtml

Ohio Dominican University: http://www.ohiodominican.edu