I have felt a strong personal connection to this session topic for some time. My experience as a financial aid administrator and delivering borrower education presentations on behalf of Access Group has taught me how little prospective students know about financing their graduate education. They are literally unprepared financially for the journey on which they are about to embark.
Many graduate students, at such a young age, are already dealing with financial distress and are under tremendous pressure both financially and academically. Certainly, the stress from their financial situation hurts their ability to focus and be successful while in school.
The time they spend in school is so short, relative to the rest of their lives, and yet is so valuable. The choices they make, financial and otherwise, leading up to and during their time in school are extremely important as it will affect them for many years to come.
As financial aid administrators and graduate loan specialists, together we have the tools to help them. The trick is getting them to listen and hear what we have to teach them.
Tony Sozzo, the Associate Dean for Student Affairs at New York Medical College and Reyes Aguilar, the Associate Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law are two seasoned FA professionals. They presented innovative delivery methods to create ways of reaching their prospective students.
As an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education quoted several months ago … “e-mail is for old people”. While I’m not sure that statement is necessarily accurate, it is becoming increasingly challenging to reach our students, most of whom fall in the millennial generation. We have to get creative these days to capture prospective students’ attention.
The fact is, iPhones, iPods, the iTouch and a whole world of smart phones and PDA’s are considered to be the preferred method of delivery for this generation. The use of podcasts, vodcats, and blogs can be a very effective way of sending pertinent and important messages to our students.
Tony and Reyes talked to us about podcasting and webcasting as two great ways for us to communicate with our specific audiences with brief, succinct and valuable messages.
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