Social media is playing an increasing role in all kinds of decisions, from tonight’s movie to tomorrow’s career switch. How will it change the college choice game?

We largely understand the decision about what college to attend as a matter of finding the right “fit.” Which college represents the best alignment between the student’s values, interests, and personality and the university’s academic programs, reputation, student life, cost, and other factors? In the end, a prospect must “feel right” about the college they choose. Some have even suggested that the process is similar to choosing a romantic partner. We say that young people “fall in love” with the college of their choice.

Well, social media is certainly playing a role in romantic matchmaking. What about finding that special college?

Let’s put this into context. How prospective students gather information to find that “good fit” has changed dramatically since I was a prospect more than thirty years ago. In those days the information and advice came from a narrow range of experts: the guidance counselors in your school and whatever catalogues and directories happened to be on hand at the resource center. There were a few books on college admissions, but not many. No national rankings yet. Conversations with peers and perhaps other friends and family members were important, and noting where those others were going, or had gone, to college had an impact. But overall, the people who had an impact on your choice came from within a small, geographically-defined circle.

Since then, of course, the availability of information has grown tremendously in the form of direct marketing; glossy viewbooks (my children have received enough of them to fill a small apartment); national rankings; published guidebooks and how-to books by various experts; paid consultants and seminars; even classes for high schoolers (my son was required to take a class on college admissions at his high school). Add to this the plethora of information available online from a variety of sources, including colleges themselves, and the information to guide the “fit” decision is truly overwhelming. Sorting through it is as big a challenge as making the eventual decision.

Into this cacophony comes social media. The question is whether it will add value, either by providing new kinds of information or by making it easier to sift out the most useful, relevant information from the marketplace of sources. Or will it be just another discordant sound in prospects’ ears?

One attribute that clearly distinguishes social media from other sources is that it makes peers more immediately and dynamically available. Prospects are no longer limited to conversations with students in their own school or to the few students and alumni they encounter on a college tour or a campus event. They’re not even limited by the representative peers quoted in a guidebook. Using social media, they can largely bypass college officials, consultants, and other “experts” – not to mention parents – and connect to peers from the national and even global landscape.

How do (and, more importantly, will) those connections influence the decisions of prospects and the admissions and marketing strategies of colleges and universities?

The answers are still emerging along with the technology itself. But a recent article in the New York Times pointed to one area of tension: the uneasy relationship between college admissions officers and the students they commission to blog about the school for prospective students.

As the article notes, MIT was one of the first (and is still one of the few) colleges to embrace student blogging on its website as a source of information for prospects. Other colleges are understandably hesitant, because the student blogs represent a loss of control over the message and brand. Yet one wonders: with the advent of independent and third-party sites such as College Confidential, hasn’t the control already been lost? The conversations that abound on these sites are attractive and useful to prospects because the voices are authentic and impartial. Information has already been democratized; schools like MIT that present student blogs on their admissions websites are only acknowledging the situation – and perhaps trying to create a competitive advantage by bringing some of those conversations “in house.”

Will the marketing efforts of colleges and all those “adult” voices and experts become less influential now that prospects can access the “authentic voice,” or at least voices that feel authentic because they come from peers? I think it’s likely. As the cacophony of choice and information grows, consumers turn to the sources they feel they can trust. That may be a parent, a highly-paid consultant, or a friendly college official. But it might be a thousand someones “just like me” living a thousand miles away.