Appendix A: Focus Group Transcripts Prospective Students, Group 1 Prospective Students, Group 2

APPENDIX A: FOCUS GROUP TRANSCRIPTS Prospective students, Group 1 Prospective students, Group 2
ST. AMBROSE UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS FOCUS GROUP EIGHT PARTICIPANTS OCTOBER 19,199s - 6:00 P.M. PAGE 1
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(introductory remarks and explanation of group process.) Tell me where you go to

school. Are you all planning to go to college right now? Is there anybody not planning to go to college next Fall? Tell me where youre thinking about going and what you might be studying at this time next Fall.
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My name is George. I go to Assumption High School. Ill probably end up going to college locally; Marycrest or Ambrose, whichever one gives a better scholarship.
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Are you from this area? Yes.
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Just call me Tad. Im going to ether St. Louis or St. Ambrose. Im leaning towards St. Louis now. Study anything to do with business. I havent made up my mind. I go to
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Anyone else go to Assumption? So you know each other. How big is that school? Small. 550.
know an abbreviation you use, I might ask for clarification. R: Im Sarah Erickson. I go to Bet North and I want to go to Scott two years and then go to
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What is Scott? Its a community college. I want to be an English teacher. Im Jennie Moore. I go to Davenport West and Im looking at either Penn State or University of Iowa, broadcasting. Is that radio, television?
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Television. My name is Sarah and I go to Rock Island High School. I plan on going to the University of Iowa after Im done and studying political history, political science. Im going to go into pre-law. Im Jeff. I go to Davenport West. I plan on going to Scott and transferring to University of Northern Iowa - and teaching, probably English. -
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Im Brianna. I go to Assumption. Im going to go to Ambrose and study criminal justice
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Im Valerie Curtis. I go to Davenport North. I plan on either attending University of Northern Iowa or Iowa and I plan on studying medicine. I havent decided which field
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Let me start out by asking, have any of you been hearing from colleges? Oh, yes!
Its annoying. A guy called me and he was on the phone with me for an hour and a half. He was from
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How did you stay on the phone for an hour and a half? I dont know.
He just kept talking about the school and then asking about me and my personal life. He said, Well you can do this and this at Iowa State. It was a student.
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I just put them down on my ACTs as a school I might want to go to, and they were like my last choice and they called me. Were you surprised to get the call? Was that the only one that you received? No. Ive gotten them from UN1 and Ambrose. Anybody else receive phone calls? Looks like six of you have been called. Who called you? Cornell in Iowa, Kirkwood. For softball, asking me about me and what I plan to do and basically things about softball, mostly. A few other colleges that I wasnt very interested in. Like which ones? Mt. St. Clair or Mt. St. Mary, something....thats in Wisconsin. I didnt really pay attention to the other ones. So, the one that you received from Cornell, was that a welcome call because you were interested in them? No, it was asking me to go there to play for them and everything and I wasnt really interested in. There was another area that I might go iuto and thats law enforcement, and they have a really good program but theyre extremely expensive and they dont give out scholarships, only academic scholarships and I could apply for some of them, but it wasnt really one of my preferences. Who called from these different places? Coaches, mainly. No administrators. Did they have a script that they read or was it informal? Pretty informal. It wasnt really a script. And the Kirkwood coach calls me like all the time. He just called me last night but I wasnt home, thank God. Who else had calls? Did you, Jeff?
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I got one from Upper Iowa. The person didnt really impress me. He talked about all these scholarships and they really werent that good. What would be good, and what did they offer? They offered like a two year. I kind of like four year after I got out of Scott, so I thought that wasnt that good. These were academic scholarships? Yeah. So basically they just call and say hello, Im calling from a particular school and I want to tell you about scholarships right away? Im curious to know because Ive never received a call from a college. Yeah, theyre pretty up-front when they call. Bradley and Illinois called me. Normally they call me if theyre at the high school. I get them a lot of times just from schools in Illinois if theyre going to be in the counseling office that week or like one was from Bradley and they wanted to meet at Jumers, but I didnt have a chance to go because I had to go to work, but Ive met with Bradley a couple of times because thats where my parents want me to go, but Im not really leaning towards it. So these are mostly to tell you that theyre going to be at the high school. Yeah, like Ambrose has called. Actually I got a lot of calls. Like Illinois State. Theyll just call and say theyre going to be in the counseling office. Anybody else get calls like that? We get a little notice telling you a certain school is meeting during a certain period and youre welcome to go. Have any of you ever gone to those meetings? Okay, just about everybody. Id like to hear more about those. What other calls?
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ST. AMBROSE UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS FOCUS GROUP EIGHT PARTICIPANTS OCTOBER 19,1998 - 6:00 P.M. PAGE 5 R: Buena Vista University. Its in Storm Lake, Iowa. They were on my ACT form. They called to tell me about what they had to offer in my field. So you get calls. How often did this happen in the past month? How many phone calls. About four. Yeah. Did any schools call that youd never heard of and just seemed really out of the blue? Morningside. Does everybody get mail from them? I get a lot of mail from them. Okay, what do they send? I dont read it. I just throw it away, but stuff. Nothing huge. Envelope size. Just a letter for you to send in. They send a business reply thing. You send it in, theyll send you information. I get a lot from Millikin and Marquette. That might be just because Im from Illinois, but thats the two main schools everybody gets from. Anybody else from Illinois? No. What about the initial mailings? I guess you got quite a bit of mail back last March or so? Through the summer? How did they find you? I dont know. Probably just contact schools. I know we did a thing in my English class where everybody filled out. We got in the computer and just put in our names and where we lived and stuff and what we planned on going into and thats mostly where you get a lot of the college letters from. Like you put three fields you might want to go into. We filled out interest surveys and a couple of months go by and you get a little sheet that shows your interest in different areas and courses you like and you dont like.
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Just at your school? Who else did that? Other places they get your name? We had a college fair we went to. We just filled out at every stand you wanted to. Have all those people kept in touch with you? Yes, a lot of them. Unfortunately. Have there been any places that have called or written to you and youve written back or told them youre no longer interested? No, I just throw them away. So they still keep doing that. Has anyone had an experience where youve said, Im not looking at your school and they kept on writing or calling or any of that? No? Okay, lets talk about applications. Are you now starting to apply to schools? When does that happen? My counselor told me to start in January. They told me to apply for housing like before Christmas. Like with Iowa and the bigger schools. The bigger schools want you to apply as soon as possible so if you go there you can get housing. I want til I can take my ACTs about two more times before Im going to apply. So, housing in December, you say? Yeah, Christmas time. Before the new year. And then apply for admission in January or so? Dont you apply for admission and housing at the same time? I think you have to apply
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before you can apply for housing. R: Its either application or transcript - theyll throw one away if you dont send one in. I think its the transcripts. Now at this point has anybody actually submitted an application to any schools? You have? Okay. Was it by a paper application or did you apply over the Internet? I just did it on paper. I dont like computers. Has anybody thought about applying over the Internet? You have? To where? University of Iowa. Have you already been on that site? How does that work? Tell me a little bit about that. The whole applications on the computer. They spell it all out. How do you all feel about doing that? Applying over the Internet versus paper. Any preference one way or the other? Lets say all the schools had an option for paper or Internet. Preferences? Whats your gut feeling? I would want to go on-line on the Internet because you could keep going over it and over it before you sent it in and then if you were writing it out youd have to keep rewriting it. It would take a lot less time if you went on the Internet. Yeah, it would be easier to do. Just like she said. I say paper. Paper. Paper. Paper. Its more personal. Id rather just write it out, I guess. I dont like computers very much.
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I hate them. Terrible. I hate the Internet. I guess its more of a security thing because people can look at the Internet while youre on it. They can steal your identity. A lot of times theyll ask your social security number. Im so paranoid about those things. Have you had a bad experience with the Internet? No. I dont like it. I hate it. Im a computer person to a certain extent but the Internet confuses me too much. Sure, some people say its easy, but I hate it. I watch my friend and it just scares me to go on it by myself. Why? What happened. Her name is Shoshana, so we call her Sho-Sho or Showgirl. So she used her name Show Girl so everyone automatically thought she was a showgirl and they sent her all this porn stuff on the computer. I was there one time and she got porn after porn, minute after minute. I thought she was joking, but its true. She gets tons and tons of this crap every single minute. Has anybody every used the Internet to research colleges or anything like that? Almost everybody. Whats that like? Thats easy. You just type in your college and they give you subjects. Or you can type in your own subjects and theyll give you information on courses and things they have to offer. Do you just go on a web browser? Our school has it so we can just go right on to it and find out information. We have a class in school thats called Internet Class and its one of the things you do
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every week, go on and just do a different college. You have to do a write up on it and stuff. It was kind of good because you got to see more colleges than if you were to go up to the counseling office and try to find out what school you actually wanted to go to. I learned a lot from that class, really. M: Now when you went to look at the colleges, would you go into a website that has all the colleges in it? On our computers at school theres just a page, its like a little clip on, its a page you can go to and its all the colleges and you can just type it in. Do you happen to know the name of that site? No. Ive got all the stuff at home. I dont know what it is. Anybody know names of sites? In our library we have a program specifically for colleges, called Peterson College Finder. Any others come to mind? Who else has researched colleges? How do you go about it? Just go on typing and it comes up. When you go in, do you also look at different websites for the colleges? Aside from the name, the home page, student websites or faculty websites or any of that? What is that like? You mean like the sorority kind of thing? I wanted to join a sorority at Iowa, so they had a link on their page to get there. So I kind of figured out which one I want to rush. What kind of information do they have? Just a lot of pictures. Some of them kind of looked funner, the ones that have pictures showing the things that they do. They also have cost, tuition, things that you have to pay, when you can live there, because you cant your freshman year. M: Any other uses of the Internet that you found in searching? How about e-mail? Has anyone e-mailed colleges for information?
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I plan to, but its whenever I get off my lazy butt and do it! Has anybody received e-mail from colleges? I dont check my e-mail, so I dont know. At home, how many of you are on-line and have Internet access? So, about half of you. But you dont like to use it? Ive never used it. What about other types of things? Do you get a lot of mail? What kinds of things do colleges send? Books. Little pamphlets telling you what majors they have. Like when you put on your ACTs what you want to be, then all of the sudden I got this big old typed letter from Iowa State saying, we have a good English department and all this other stuff. So they just send me pamphlets about that thick. I read them; I look through them. But they dont register. Have you seen any that really caught your attention? No? How come? I want to go to a smaller college. I know a lot of people who go to the big university and they just dont make it. I just want to stay around here. Was it because of the brochure itself! Or was it because you had an interest in the school? I know my way around that school and I know a lot of people who have gone there and have had a good experience and have gone on to do better things. Any other thoughts about brochures? Has anybody seen some that are memorable? How about letters? Do you get letters? A lot of times your name goes on a mailing list and theyll mail you a letter.
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Slap your name in where it needs to be put. Theyre pretty much the same. You dont think they prepare each one individually? Some of them just say, Dear Friend, thats real lovely. I got the exact same letter like four different times. I got two on the same day. Really? Which one. Loras. And Morningside. These letters then, some are personalized? And then some are not? Everybody gets the same letter. They just change the name on it. How do you know this? You just know. Its an engineering form. Is that better than Dear Friend or Dear Student? Would you rather have it with your name included? Its not going to make a difference in where I go to school. But you did mention Dear Friend, that you didnt like that particularly. Oh, no. I was just saying thats how they put it. Any other experiences with letters, things youve gotten in the mail? Anything outrageous? Anything that was really different than the norm?
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Morningside had a water slide. You and I had that. They just got a new wellness center so they had that in their little letter. But thats really nice, that facility. Its only for students. You can go there and work out. They have classrooms in there if you want to go for phys. ed or something. Its really a nice facility. I liked it a lot. Id like you to think back a little bit to when you first started thinking seriously about college. Lets go around the room. When do you think it was when you actually started thinking about this? First day of school last year. Probably last year when I took the ACT. Middle of my junior year. Do you remember why then? No. I just knew it was coming close. Same. When you take your ACT the first time, because you have to think about it because it has all these questions about it and it got me thinking about it. During my junior year. ACT the first time. When is that first test? April or March? It varies. You get to choose your test date. Actually the first test this year is next weekend. Mines this weekend.
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How many are taking it? When did you first begin thinking about college? Probably in my junior year. Junior year. How many times do you think you all will take the ACT? Once. Two. Two or three times. Is anybody going to only take it one time? You are. Yes. Im pretty happy with my scores. How about SATs? Anybody going to take an SAT? My counselor didnt suggest it. I told her what schools I was interested in.... Only like the East Coast. Yeah. Theyre like, its not required for colleges in Iowa. You dont really need it. The ACT is the important one. Other tests like achievement tests or any of those? No. Throughout school we had those bogus tests. You have a pen in front of you. Im going to pass these out, put the date and time on the top right. Dont over think the items in this list, but look at each one and if its at all important to you put a check. You can put as many checks as you want. After that, pick out five and rank order those five from 1 through 5 and you have to decide which of those five is most important and which is least. Let me pick on a couple of you: Jeff, what was your number one most important attribute?
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Id say like 20 or 25. I dont think a big lecture room with tons of kids, I dont think thats a very good class size at all. If its full you dont have a lot of - the teachers are not emphasizing on you very much. I dont think thats good. You would sit in the back and sleep. Do you think that most of the places youre going will have some of that? No, but the big universities will. I kind of forgot where you are leaning toward. If you are looking at a large university, let me see your hands. Okay, and then the smaller? Pretty much everybody else. Now, scholarships and financial aid, that rated pretty high. Id like to know a little bit more about that. Are you hearing anything about scholarships? And what do they say? What are you looking at? Today we had St. Louis representative and they talked about scholarships and then you look at the sheet and find out the scholarships they were talking about, only 40 people get choosed for those. So why even bring it up? Were those big scholarships? Yeah, pretty big. Whats big? A couple that said full ride and then like for 20 students it was like $5,000 off or something. For 10 students it was like free room and board and a little off tuition. Im curious. Today you said you saw a rep. And did that rep talk about .it, say the 40 as though that was a lot of scholarships? She didnt really mention how many was available. She just started talking about that they were available and I looked on the sheet and I saw like forty at most were available. She didnt say anything about forty.
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What are some other thoughts about scholarships? We have a book on them at school and I was talking to my counselor and she said she had a student that was average, like a 3.0 who did decent on her ACTs and she said that she made it part of the job. Shed sit down and fill out scholarships every time shed come in there and fill out a different one and she ended up getting a lot of money for school. At first I kind of looked and thought, oh all these are too hard, like Im not going to get any of these. And she was like, no. I mean, Im not stupid or anything but Im just not in the top 5%. She said dont look at it that way and then after I started going through them, there were probably a lot of them that I could get. Theres tons of them. This one girl I know is Italian and she got a scholarship because the last letter of her last name was a certain letter. How did she find out about it? They have this huge book. When I took my ACTs they asked me if I wanted information on scholarships. And Ive looked them up on the Internet and there are some of them you cant believe. My sister in law is Mexican and she got a full ride. Indians get full rides out of places too. Theres a left handed scholarship. Has anybody looked on the Internet for scholarships? Like a search service or something like that. My counselor gave me some. She said she doesnt want us to go on there and look at them because she said that they all guarantee if you pay us $40 we can get you a scholarship. She did give me one website that she liked and she said theres one at school where we can pay $10 and they send you all this information. She said thats the best way if you have to pay money, to get any information about. Are there any that are free that you know of? How do you get these scholarships? Youre lucky if you have the last name, or youre left handed. But whats the process for getting a scholarship?
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Some of them are huge books, like an essay. You write a paper. Are these for particular colleges or are they independent? I think theyre more independent, and then theres some state scholarships. If youre really smart, theres some from that school. Like Iowa. I looked and you have to be in the top 5%. How else do you get these scholarships? Where your parents work. I work at WalMart and can get a scholarship from there. If your parents work at Alcoa, John Deere. Do you actually know people who have gotten them? Yes. I got a letter from John Deere. They take people and have meetings and try to get you to go. I didnt get to go to the meeting but they said if I did these things theyd help me out with school. What about particular colleges? Have you heard how to apply for their own scholarships? You mentioned St. Louis, for example. How do you go about applying? I really dont know. For St. Ambrose, when they sent me a letter they said when I go to look at the campus on a tour, just ask about it and theyd give me the information on it. Ambrose, I think you get about $1500 if you went to a Catholic high school. And then if your parents went there you get some off.
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And if you have a certain grade point theyll give you whatever. And a certain ACT score, too. I think its kind of like a built in figure for you. Any other schools that you know how they do that? I know at Marycrest if youre a foreign nationality you get something. Im curious about the ones that if you go to a Catholic school or had ACT scores or something, if those are kind of automatic, then? Ambrose and Loras are. If there were a school that you were pretty interested in that you had to go for an interview, would you do it? No. Yes. Depends on how much money it was.
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Quite a bit. Whats that? Where would you draw the line? Lets say theres a school youre pretty
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Like one on one? No, lets say like for a bigger group. Like a scholarship weekend.
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And it would depend on the college. Like, if I really thought I was going to go there and I really thought I had a chance at a scholarship, but if I didnt think I was going to, Id think, screw that. What would be your bottom line? Probably about a thousand, if I was forced to by my parents. Other people? Lets say youre all in the running for scholarships at schools that youre kind of interested in. Would you go for the interview? I would go. You said something interesting about numbers available. Has anybody else seen published numbers of scholarships that are available? Like at her school, we have a big binder of scholarships available. Like he said, left handed scholarships, if your name is Italian. Theres a deadline date, criteria, you have to write a paper. Theyll say theres like four $1,000 scholarships and six $500 scholarships. Are most of the scholarships that are offered renewable over four years? A lot of the smaller ones are. You all look pretty athletic. Are you athletes, too? Raise your hand if youre thinking about scholarships. Wow, most of you. How many are looking at college athletics, possibly? And you do softball? And whats your sport? Soccer. But how many are getting calls from coaches? Really, just you. Ive gotten letters but not calls. Ive gotten both.
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I know the coaches. I play basketball but actually Im thinking about not playing this year because Ive got a job. Back to the colleges that youre thinking of. What is it about them .that interests you? What are some of the aspects of school that will matter to you, and why? Social life. The fun of it. Is it something structured youre thinking of? Like fraternities? Preferably not. Whats a good social life at a college? Not a dry campus. Parties. Kegger parties. Other things that matter where youre thinking of going. Whats going to make it in the final decision? Youre going to say, okay, I pick this school because its got this sort of aspect to it. . I dont think theres one thing you really pick. Just a lot of different things and you cant really pick one thing. Its a lot of things put together. Sports doesnt necessarily... If somebodys going to give you a full ride and its at a crap college and they dont have what you really want, youre not going to take it. Right, like if they dont have your major. It depends on the school and what youre majoring in. Like I want to go into law and I know Iowas got a really good law program. Thats the main reason why. Its hard to get into there, but....
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ST. AMBROSE UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS FOCUS GROUP EIGHT PARTICIPANTS OCTOBER 19,1998 - 6:00 P.M. PAGE 22 I know this kid. Im so jealous of him. Hes dumb as a rock. He graduated two years ago and he got a full ride at Ambrose because hes a football player. Dumb as a rock. (End of side one.) I couldnt believe it. Full ride. I wouldnt say hes dumb but his grades were terrible. So, Sarah for you, what would be the ideal combination of factors in that ideal college? Class size, basically. I just dont want to get to college and just be a number in a class. I want to know my teachers. If I have a question I dont want to have to go make an appointment to go see them. I want to know then. Anybody share that idea? Oh, yes. Me too. Has anybody actually been on an official college visit? St. Louis and (?). What did you do? Walk around a couple of hours just to kind of please my mom, basically. Did she ask all the questions? For the most part. Did you just take a tour? Just basically took a tour. Too long. The main reason I really wanted to go there for that particular day.. . I visited Scott. My mom drived me there. She drived me there against my will because I really dont want to go there for two years and then transfer. But after I was there for a while it didnt seem that bad and I figured Id give my mom a break.
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Jennie did you visit any colleges? No. How about unofficially? Did you visit a friend or something? Yes. That was a lot better. I got into trouble going there. It was up in Milwaukee and thats sort of a party town. Ive been to Bradley, UN1 and Iowa. I have friends at those places and I stayed on campus at Iowa and UN1 but I didnt stay on campus at Bradley. Me and my mom we just went up there and walked around the campus. I went to Ambrose, Buena Vista and Iowa State. My brother went to Buena Vista for a year and so we went up there to see him and went to football games and stuff. I was only in fifth grade but I could tell it was a party town. And Iowa State, theres just no way Id get through it because of partying every night. Its the number one school in engineering. Its tough. I visited University of Iowa, Northern Iowa, Iowa State, Buena Vista. When you visit the schools, do you get a good feel for what theyre like? Yes. Are they all different? Yeah. Id like to have you fast forward and lets say its a year from now and youre in your school. Picture yourself in college right now, Are you there? Think about what does it look like, where are you right now? Whats going on around you? Picture that scene. Now draw me a picture of it and dont worry if your drawing isnt great. Ive got to step out for just a minute. Ill be right back. - As you are finishing up, what kinds of things do you read regularly? Are there certain magazines?
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Sporting News, sports pages. Little clips on the movies. Except for our English teachers is making us read books now. We use ones that weve read before. I havent read a book since grade school. I always read. I read like everything. Actually I just finished this book its by a writer. I dont know what his name is. Its kind of like a Stephen King. I like scary stuff. I read whatever my mom gives me. I read one by whats his face. Its like a true story that he put into a book that happened in the 60s. Its for one of my classes and I only had to read so much of it but I ended up liking the book and reading the whole thing. It was so good I started and I like totally got into it. Thats the same with one of Michael Creightons. It kind of got me hooked; I wanted to know what happened. How about magazines? What are some magazines? People. Sports Illustrated. Sports News. I just read the other day that the number one magazine among 17 year old young men is Penthouse and for young women its Teen Magazine. What about newspapers? Do you all read newspapers? Yes. Im bored with the locals. What do you hear about the colleges in the newspaper? Do you ever see any articles about colleges?
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Just the bad stuff My dad? Hell circle these stupid things about why people decide where to go..... I hate that! Like last night she gave me a newspaper clipping. What was it? I dont know. A couple of years ago I read that thing about those three LSU kids that died. They drank too much. Oh, yeah, my mom was telling me about... I heard something about it earlier. What did your mom show you to read last night?] I dont know, like the whole newspaper magazine kind of thing? Shes trying to make me read that and I pretend like Im looking through it and I just put it down, so I dont know what it was about. Okay. Others? What were the articles that were circled that.... Probably once week hell leave an article like in my place in the kitchen. Theyre just all so stupid. Everybody has their little place on the kitchen table. Theyre just all different, like why people decide where to go, and then what people like about small colleges, what they like about big colleges. Just stupid stuff. I dont read it. My mom bought a book on colleges. One of those fat ones? The Lovejoys? Huge book and she tried to make me flip through it, but theyre all like on the East Coast and whatever. It was a waste of twenty five bucks. Have you heard of any schools in the news recently?
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Wyoming. Yeah, Wyoming. Louisville. For what? They snapped their losing streak in football. I heard something about somebody at Illinois getting shot or something. So it sounds like mostly bad news is what you hear. Yeah, never any good news. Ive seen the Scott commercials. The Clinton/Scott/Muscatine commercials. Alright. Im glad you brought that up. How about TV? Have you ever seen any ads for colleges? The local ones. I see Iowa sometimes when they have basketball or football games on. During the breaks they have their little promotionals? Any other ones? You see a lot if youre going to go into the army or the marine corps. But thats not really a bad choice. My sister went to Navy and she gets $400 a month for school. They help you out a lot. And shes going to Scott and then shes going to transfer and so all she paid beginning of the semester she all has paid off right now and then she just gets that money. Does she get it quarterly or like once a month or.... Nope. Shes out now.
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How about other ads. Do you ever hear anything on the radio? Some cosmetology. Theres some barber college thats on now. So, its mostly technical schools or vocational? Any of the colleges youre interested in advertise on TV or radio or in the newspaper? Have you seen any of that? Not really. Never saw one? Alright, lets see whos going to win the contest for the best drawing. Why dont you show us. Thats my disco ball. Is this your dorm room? Where are you? Wherever I end up. Are you in a room som.ewhere? Yeah, in my dorm room, watching TV. What are you drinking there? Pop! What else is happening here? Just watching TV. Okay, so thats college life. Okay, whats going on here? Its real bad. Im in my dorm room with a book. What does this say? Looks like it says coke. Is it supposed to be coke?
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Yeah. So youre sitting there reading a book, studying. Studious. Im at a party. Nothing else to do. No studying; I got all my homework done early. Im just having a good time and drinking, of course. But Im a (?) so I forgot to draw the pop bottle. So thats you with the bottle and the stereos saying boom boom and theres a wine cooler and.... . ..and beer. And yours? Thats my drunk roommates and Im just getting home from class. Jeff? This is my dorm or whatever and my popcorn and two people talking and thats about it. It sucks. I dont know how to draw. Mine is just a whole bunch of kids at school. One of thems going to be me. This is my dorm, Im studying. It looks very orderly. This is me in algebra class, sleeping. And someones got question marks. And what is that upper right? Thats the teacher saying Blah, blah, blah. Pretty scary, actually. Why dont you hand those in to me. Also hand in the other sheet. Now, this is going to be a little bit complicated, only because there are 11 schools on the iist. What you need to do is rank order these from best to worse, 1 being best, 11 being worst. Theres only going to be 1 number one, 1 number 6, 1 number 11. Do the best you
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can, but based on what you know about these colleges, rank them from 1 to 11. Best reputation, best quality, what you think are the best schools. R: M: What if you have no idea? Guess. Wing it. Lets try then, if you dont know, just guess, based on the name. Im making this up as we go along. Lets say you are doing the college rankings and you are giving your rankings, one being best, eleven being the worst in the group. - Ahight. Why dont you go ahead and hand that in to me. I want to do a word association exercise. In other words, like the psychologist laying on the couch, whats the first word that comes to mind. I do want to hear from everybody. Well go this way. Ill point to someone and I dont want you to think too much about it. Theres no right or wrong answers. Just the first word that comes to mind when I say the school. Im looking for something that sort of characterizes the school in a word. Like, if I said the word Volvo maybe the word safety would come to mind, would you agree? Or like Hynes Catsup maybe the word Slow would come to mind. Lets see, what would be a good one to start out with? How about at the top of the list, Drake University? Bulldog. Track. DesMoines. Football. sports. In-state. Ill say the sports. Is that really the first one that came to mind? I dont know the college. Okay, if youve absolutely never heard of it or have no idea whatever, you can say pass.
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Some kid I know goes there. I dont know anything else. University of Northern Iowa? My eighth grade teacher. Okay, how about more about the school, what you know about the school. Lets not say people that we know. That may be the first thing that does come to mind, but more about the image of the school. Purple and gold. Education. I loved the campus a lot. We walked around at night and it actually kind of felt secure there. I was with guys, but it just felt like it was a homey campus. It wasnt real big and you didnt have to worry about.... I saw a lot of security when I was there. I was going to say friendly, the people. Water slide! Athletics. Football. Pass. You dont know anything about it? Youve never heard of it? Oh, Ive heard of it. Everything thats been said. Well, whats the one thats most like what you would think of most often about that school? Wellness center. They have rock climbing and water slides. So this is an actual building?
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ST. AMBROSE UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS FOCUS GROUP EIGHT PARTICIPANTS OCTOBER 19,199s - 6:00 P.M. PAGE 3 1
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Yeah, they just built it a few months ago. It wasnt finished when I was there in June. St. Norbert College? Never heard of it. Pass. Pass. Probably mail, because they mailed me stuff. I never heard of them before but I just got some mail from them. Do you remember anything about them? Anything that they said? No. I pitched probably 95% of the stuff. Pass. Pass. Pretty campus. My brother went there. Pass. Next is Loras College. Sarah? P a s s . I like the campus. Its small but nice. Pass. Loras, never heard of it? Ive heard of it but Ive never been there; dont know anything about it. Sports. Nothing in particular.
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Basketball. My brother plays for them. Mail. So that was the one you said you got a lot of mail from? No, thats Morningside. Loras? No image. Me neither. Pass. University of Iowa? Hospital. They have a famous hospital? I was born there. How about either the campus or the university, aside from the hospital? Sports. Softball, mainly. Too big and alcohol came to mind. Writers. I know a lot of English writers came out of that school. English writers? Like novelists? Just authors. Thats where I want to go to school. Thats what came to mind. I dont know anything else.
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Aside from the personal connection, if you described the school....? I just think Iowa citizens think its an interesting place. Like coming from the quad cities its a good place to go because its more like a bigger city. So would it be fair to say bigger city - interesting? More things to do. And maybe after you graduated, more opportunity if you decided that you liked it. Close and easy to fit in. How come? Just going down there, everyones pretty friendly to you. Is there any place that makes you feel like it wouldnt be as easy to fit in? St. Olaf. How come? I just know a lot of snobbish musicians that go there. Sometimes smaller schools are already set with all their friends and its harder to meet new people. Theres so many people at Iowa. University of Iowa? Large Football games. St. Ambrose University. Baseball. Close.
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Sports. Football. Private. Davenport. Their administrator that came to our school is a fox. Familiar. I live right next to it. I know a lot of people. Close and private. Are any of these other schools private? St. Olaf. Drake is, I think. For Ambrose, safe choice. Why is it safe? Youre staying in Davenport. Its not real risky. Its really more if you cant make up your mind, I think. Or, if you make up your mind you want to got there. You cant get lost very easily. Yeah, small. Good size. Mt. Mercy College? Pass. Pass.
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Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. No ones ever heard of it? Ive heard of it. I got mail from them. No impression of it? Nobody? Not a clue. Sounds like its easy to get into. Augustana College? Close. Ugly classrooms. You just walk in there and the walls are green or yellow and its just nasty. Football. Football. Soccer. Softball and baseball. Do you all know people that play these sports? Just aware of it. Too much mail. No other impressions of the school; just the mail.
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So are they like.... Too annoying. Only school around here that has an on-campus rapist. Was there an incident there? There was like two or three. There was also one at Ambrose, though. Was the person caught? I think so. Last year. I think Augustana is the best choice out of those. Probably the best school. Just everything-wise. Everybody that I know thats come out of there - I have two cousins that have graduated from there - they have become very successful. All the student teachers at our school are from Augie and everybodys always got something positive to say and theyve got a great library, too. Everybodys real nice and helpful. I know the coaching is pretty good there. Luther College? I dont know anything about it. Dont know it. Pass. Pass. All passes. Okay, Marycrest International University. Tokyo.
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No, its Teykyo. Theres a lot of students from.... Volleyball. Small. Asian. Id be afraid it would close down before I got through. If you decided to transfer youre blackballed from there. Nursing. Finally, Western Illinois University. Drugs. Law Enforcement. Football. Illinois. Macomb. Soccer. Pre-law. Party school. Psychology and athletic training. Ahight. It looks like my time is up. I want to thank you for coming. I really appreciate your help. This will be of great value in finding out what students are looking for in
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ST. AMBROSE UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS FOCUS GROUP SEVEN PARTICIPANTS OCTOBER 19,1998 - 8:00 P.M. PAGE 1
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(Introductory remarks and explanation of group process.)

I go to St. Catherine St. Marks. Its in Bettendorf. Im looking at St. Ambrose or MacMurray. Its in Jacksonville Illinois. Im probably looking at English as a major. Would that be to be an author or to teach? Author. My name is Charles Hodson. I go to West High School. The colleges Im looking at are probably Ambrose, Iowa, Cornell in Iowa and Northwestern. The major is somewhere in the business category. Im Eric Metcalf. I go to West also. Im thinking about Iowa or UNI. Maybe Ambrose, but I have no idea what kind of a major Im looking for. My names Carl Jacobson. I go to Moline High School. Im looking into schools all over the country. My familys in the middle of a move right now so were looking at things all over. In the area Im looking at Bradley and Truman State, possibly Drake. Outside of the area, were moving to Vermont, so maybe the University of Vermont in Burlington and possibly Bradford in Virginia or the College of Charleston in South Carolina. I have no major yet. Id just like to go to a school that has a good undecided program to help get people through in four years, even going in undecided, because I really have no direction right now. Im Nick Beecher. I go to Pleasant Valley. Im looking at Iowa State or MSOE Milwaukee School of Engineering and majoring in electrical engineering. Mike. I go to Pleasant Valley and Im looking at Yale or Cornell in New York, Iowa, Augustana, Brigham Young in probably astronomy or computer science as a major. Im Joyce Evans. I go to Owen and Im considering Southern Illinois at Carbondale and probably going to be a dental hygienist. So, only one school youre looking at mostly right now? Okay, thats quite a list of schools. My names Michelle. I also go Owen and Im looking at Drake, Creighton, Augustana,
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ST. AMBROSE UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS FOCUS GROUP SEVEN PARTICIPANTS OCTOBER 19,1998 - 8:00 P.M. PAGE 2 University of Illinois at Chicago and I want to major in pre-pharmacy and I want to get my doctorate. M: Im kind of curious about those who are pretty decided. Youve thought all the way through the doctorate, so how do you know right now thats what you want to do? A lot of the influence is my parents because theyre both in health related field. My dads a paramedic and my moms a nurse. Ive pretty much grown up hearing stories of what theyve done and helping people and stuff like that. With the baby boomers getting older, there are going to be a lot of older people and theyre going to need medicine and stuff like that and I wanted to go into a related field and I like medicine and reacting with people. And you sounded pretty sure what youre interested in. How do you know that? Because thats something that I like to do and I know Im good at it. And youre interested in engineering? Electrical? How do you know its electrical versus mechanical? Ive gone out and Ive visited and theyve talked me through like all the fields. Ive visited professors and stuff. It was either architectural engineering or electrical engineering that Ive gotten down to but theyre pretty different related fields so I had to pick one. Im still choosing, but Im leaning towards electrical. Anybody else have anything to add aboutwhy you are focused on a particular program or major at this point? Astronomy? Just always liked it and I want to know more about it. Lets back up a little bit. Here it is your senior year. Youre all seniors, right? When did you first start seriously thinking about college. That day? What was the day, the date, the time that it just dawned on you that you were going to give this some real thought. You dont have to get real specific as far as the date. Anyone? Probably my sophomore year. Middle of the year. In my English class we did kind of a college search type thing. That was when we started getting information.
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I was a freshman. My mom works at Wicket-Palmer College so theres a lot of input there. I kind of wanted to be a chiropractor but not any more. I suppose it was last year about this time. My brother goes to Wake Forest in North Carolina and I went out to visit him and realized how much fun he was having and how important it is to choose the right school. So I decided I needed to find a place I was going to fit in, academically and socially. Probably in my sophomore year, in maybe January. I lived in sort of a college town in Arizona, Tempe. And so it was kind of right there. Then we decided we were going to move here and we had to decide whether or not we were going to and so I looked at the colleges for a final decision on whether to go. I had always, ever since grade school, knew I wanted to go to college but I really didnt start thinking about what I wanted to do til my sophomore year. My friends a pathologist but thats just too much schooling and I changed my mind and decided I wanted to go into pharmacy and I seriously started looking for schools. I started getting ideas my sophomore year but I really started looking junior year. Have any of you received any mail from colleges? About how many different colleges? Throw out some numbers. Id say I get at least three letters every day. How many actual different, individual colleges would you say youve heard from. A lot. Id have to say at least 20 but a lot of them Id never even heard of. Upwards of 50. Total? 20 or 25 from the five colleges I mentioned because I put down on the ACT form that those colleges I wanted my scores sent to. And Ive gotten stuff from Cornell, financial aid, forms, even though Ive not really made a decision yet. So, quite a few. Youre getting mail. Have you gotten mail from any colleges you had never heard of and now youre really interested in them? MSOE.
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You really didnt know of it before but now you are interested? What happened there? Yeah. Its an urban school. Its right in downtown Milwaukee. Id always wanted to goto Iowa State for their engineering because my dad graduated from Iowa State. Hes a civil engineer. And my step sister went to Iowa State and its like everyones going to Iowa State so I would too. Id never heard of MSOE; I dont think anyone has. Its a real good engineering school and I started looking into it and they recruited me for baseball and I just kept getting interested. Has anybody here heard of MSOE? I have. Its very well known in the engineering field. No one else found out about certain schools? Youre looking at some in different parts of the country. Were you already familiar with Bradford or some of those places? Just from ties with family friends. My dad was in the military and my parents moved around so they kind of touch base on most parts of the country. So family friends and things threw out suggestions and ideas. Nothing really just got sent to me. When these schools send you the mail, how do they get your names? Theres some thing at Duck Creek. Its like a college thing and there was over 200 colleges there and they were all set up at tables with about three people from each college and you just stopped at which ever colleges table you were interested in. All you do is fill out this sheet of paper - grade point, name, address and all that. And then theyll send you something. So I got something in the mail from every table I stopped by. So like a college fair at your school? Yeah. College night. It was at Duck Creek. Other sources of the name? Someone mentioned ACT scores. So they got your name from the test company? Well you write down the colleges that you want them to send the information to. What do you think of all the mail? Kind of a hassle. Most of the schools, it depends on the type, but theres only a certain type of school that fits each person and the majority of the schools out there are not that
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type for most people. R: M: R: R: R: R: Seems like just a bunch of junk mail, sometimes. Other people share that feeling? They dont got your major, whats the use of looking at it? Rind of a stab in the dark out there. Trial and error or something. Tedious. I just thought of it as junk mail. You see the name and its just like, no. You dont even open it up most of the time. It gets annoying. You just throw it away. Some of its helpful and informative. Such as? You get information about schools you might be slightly interested in or you didnt know you were until you read it. Were there any particular schools that you were slighted in and then the mail sort of helped you get more interested? Maybe Drake. All those letters and brochures, are they alike or are there some that are really different? Are there any that sort of stand out? Repeats. I dont know; I like St. Ambrose. Its a nice bright silver. Yeah.
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That really caught my eye. Okay, two of you liked the St. Ambrose. Anybody else? Yeah. Im not going there, but I liked it. Its either Northern Iowa or Cornell, and its like a passport to there. Yeah, I saw that. That was cool. Tell me about each of these, just because Im curious about the mailings. With the St. Ambrose, what was that? It was like a silver thing. Bright silver so you couldnt miss it. It caught my eye right away. What kind of information was in that? I just think it was a good general overview of the college. The information was the same as you get in most of them, it was just the fact that it catches your eye a little more than some others. Did that go in an envelope with a letter? Or was it mailed without a letter? Do you remember? I dont remember. I got mine from a college representative at school, so I just picked it up that way. I just got mine from the mail. And what was the other school you mentioned that had an unusual mailing? Cornell or Northern Iowa. It was Northern Iowa.
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It was just like a passport to their college. It was a little purple thing about that big. And did it have anything in it that was useful? Senior dates and visitation times and things like that. What about the Internet? Have any of you researched a college on the Internet? Show me you hands. So five of you have. What is that all about? What did you do on the Internet? Its really convenient because you can go in and look exactly at what you want to and not have to read through everything that you dont really care to know. I thought it was a great source of information. I did a lot of research on Yale on the Internet. Just a lot of good stuff that I didnt know before. My mom used it. Did she pull you over and say, Look at this? Yeah, she would give me names and stuff. As long as she knows about it, then Im all right. Shes very hyped up about it and Im like, just kind of take it when it gets there. Im not the best with computers, to tell you the truth. So if I really want to check out a school on the.Intemet Ive got to have a good 45 minutes to actually find it. And then I have a difficult time with some. Some are really easy but some are difficult to find and to find the information Im really looking for. Ive looked. Its more like informative. I went to like my major and they talked about their program. And you can learn more about their sports team and stuff like that. Do you remember any schools that you looked up on the Internet? Southern Illinois. Any other ones? No. Okay. You mentioned Yale as a website you remembered. What was it about that that was different or helpful?
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I dont know. They had everything on there from financial aid to course study to tuition costs. Just everything you want to know about Yale. I printed out about 33 pages of stuff. Who else? Charles, did you do any work on the Internet? No, not really. Most of the stuff I just took what they had from the mail. It really gave me a good idea from there. How about applying? Do any of you think youre going to apply to colleges via Internet? You do. Anybody else? Some schools have a free application if you do it on the Internet. You save yourself $35 or $40. Why not? Its just as easy. Do you think its the same thing, applying over the Internet versus the paper? / They tell you it is. Does everyone agree that its the same? Okay. Does anybody think it might be different, that it might not be as good for your case? I think its tougher over the Internet. Do you think they might secretly resent you for not paying the application fee? What I was wondering was, if you have to send in a personal essay, how do you do that? Do you just type it. No. You have to have two essays for your application process so you cant do it on-line. Any other thoughts on the Internet? How about e-mail? Has anybody gotten e-mail from colleges or exchanged e-mail? You have? With the baseball coach at Arizona. Hes the dean, so it was real easy. But talking about just baseball, and then also talking about academics. So hes e-mailed me before. He wasnt personalized or anything. Ive sent e-mail requests for applications or to get more information on a specific course.
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Like the astronomy department at Brigham Young, or computer science or something. M: Okay. How about getting further into the sites. Has anyone been on the student site at the college or the faculty site? Or seen any of those? Yeah. Most of the time I just go and check out what kind of student events they have. St. Ambrose has a nice one. I also looked at it because I had to have my cousin who goes to St. Ambrose look up something for a class. I just mess around there and that was about it. Any other experiences over the web? How about scholarships? Is anybody looking at scholarships at colleges? Yeah. Fast web. What is that? ww.fastweb. I guess, its my mom. It gives you lists of scholarships available. Is anybody else using that one? You are. Anyone else? Okay, no one else has heard of that? What is your experience with that? You enter your personal profile type thing and then theyll put scholarships in your personal mailbox that fit your academic major or where in the country you want to go to school. So they kind of limit them to what you want to do. On that website have you heard from colleges, then? Is that how it works? I dont really hear from colleges from that. They just tell you what scholarships are available and if you want to get an answer from them, you can. Have you been able to do that? Ive checked into it a little but I havent really done it. Does that cost anything? No, its free.
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I want to ask you to take a couple of minutes and take a look at this form. Dont over think it, just place a check mark by any attribute that you think is important at all. Check as many as you want. In the third column, pull up five that are the most important, and in those five, rank order them one through five. One is the most important and five is fifth most important. - Alright, what were some of the number one most importants? Location. And in your case, what does that mean? More like the town aspect, town size and how close the place would be to a bigger city and close to some relatives. Someplace to retreat to if you need to. I put location. To be close, within maybe two hours from home. And why within two hours? Why is that important. Because....1 dont know. I guess because my family has gone through a lot and I think its important for us to stick together. Any other locations as number one? Yours too? No. Okay, what was your number one? Quality of specific academic programs. How many of you had that as in your top five? Okay, quite a few. And in your case, why did you pick that one? Because I can focus on what I want to do. I dont want to go to a general school that has a lot because I dont really need to figure out because I know. So I want to go to a big school so when I graduate its easier job placement. I put emphasis on undergraduate education as number one. Anybody else have that one? Okay, now why is that important to you?
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Because as long as I get a good education I can figure stuff out and make sure thats what I want to do. Did anybody else have undergraduate education up there in the top five? Okay, no right or wrong answers. Everyone has a different list, Im sure. Charles, what was your top? Personal attention, just so that if youre struggling in a class the teacher wont blow you off and drop you from the grading scale. But theyll come and help you or send you to somebody that can. Anybody else have personal attention up there in the top five? You did too? And you? And what was your number one? Financial aid or scholarships. Anyone else have that one in the top five? Let me ask you a question about the mechanics of scholarships and financial aid. A lot of you are looking at scholarships, possibly, and financial aid. How do the colleges do that? Do they just give you the money? How do you get the academic scholarships? What are some of the processes? A lot of it is your grade point average, your class point average, your ACT score. Im sure theres more but thats just the ones that Ive been looking at. All I know is at Drake they have a certain thing, if you have a certain grade point average and a certain ACT score, you either get $7500 up-front, $6500, $4500. It all depends on where you fall on the grid. Has anybody heard about that one at Drake? You have? Not at Drake, but at Truman State. Actually all the Missouri schools have that and its just where you...they take your GPA and match it up. So they match it up. If you had a certain grade point then you automatically - if you go into one of those given schools get that certain amount of money. Have you heard ofthat too, Eric? Yeah. So this is kind of an automatic thing, though. If your numbers are there then youre guaranteed? Is that how that works? Have you heard of any other ways of doing that?
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Like interviewing or writing papers? R: M: R: R: R: M: R: Things like Presidential Scholarships or alumni, stuff like that. Okay, what schools have those? I know Augustana does. MSOE. Drake does too. So does Creighton. And what do you have to do to get those? Basically its the same guidelines. Your ACT score and you go on a special interview or write an essay. So there are some scholarships that are automatic, based on your GPA and ACTs and so on, and others you have to interview for? Has anybody been for one of those interviews? You have? What did you have to do? They just ask you a whole lot of personal questions about what youre looking for. Much of it has nothing to do with what your major was or anything. It was all kind of like a personal evaluation. And where was that? MSOE. Did you just come in there on your own? No. We went up there for a visit and the guy took me into a room. Just curious: if you were interested in a school, lets say a little bit interested, it wasnt necessarily your top choice, but there was a scholarship opportunity and you needed to go to that school and interview and lets say it was on a weekend or a weekend day or maybe had an overnight with it. Would you go? How many of you would go for that?
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It depends on location. It would depend on the type of scholarship, as in how much money. Like some scholarships you can get over again and stuff like that. You mean if its renewable versus a one-shot deal? Yeah. Also depends on how interested you are in the school. If youre really not that interested.... Other thoughts? Would you go? Sure. Have you ever known anyone who has gone - aside from your experience - gone for tests or anything like that? Do any of these schools do these kinds of things? And whats involved in that? I dont really know, but they just told me thats what they did. Theres also musical scholarships and theater scholarships where you have to go and do an interview, kind of like an audition. Has anyone done that? So, lets say a school said you needed to come here for this particular weekend and have an interview, depending on how interested you were, depending on the money, would those things determine it? Yes. Lets say youre not all that interested in the school. Youre kind of but youre not all that interested. What would the minimum amount be that might make it worth your while be to go for that scholarship? Lets say its not an airplane trip, necessarily. Depends on the cost of the tuition of the school to start with. If its a $25,000 a year school, $5,000 isnt a whole bunch. But if its a $12,000 a year state school, $5,000 might help a lot.
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So, in terms of percentage of the tuition, if youre saying 5 out of 12, youre talking about 40-some percent or something like that? What if its a $500? No. Nothing. What about the places that youre familiar with that have scholarships. Do they tell you what your chances are of getting them? Yeah. They tell you the percentage of people who receive it, usually. So if its 2,000 applicants for two $500 awards, its not going to cut it for you? Do representatives or others talk about the number of scholarships that they actually give each year? Is that published some times? We have the average the year before or how ever many years before, how many people did it and then they tell you how many were given out. They also focus on how many are receiving financial aid altogether, not just scholarships, but money they can afford to pay. And then theres the financial aid thats more based on your need. Are most of you going to try for that, too? Well try. Any other top fives that we didnt talk about? Placement. You want to go to a school thats going to get you a good job. So thats definitely in my top five. First of all, if you want to go to a college - like I was thinking about going to Augustana, but they dont have a pharmacy program - but their placement and graduate programs are like go-some percent. So looking at that, and then I was also looking at Drake, and their percentage of pharmacists actually getting a job after graduation is 100% and thats really good. So I think thats really importants.
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Any other thoughts on placement? That was my most important one. And do these colleges get you jobs? Yeah. Before you graduate theyve got like 99.9% placement in most all of the fields. Some of them have career days at their schools and they have some of the larger companies from whatever community theyre around. And if they have had good results from the people at the school in the past, they tend to come back. They get quite a few people drawn in by surrounding companies, the larger companies in the area. What is the job outlook for you all in, say, five years from now? If youre not going right on to grad school? I think it depends on your area of study. In my field I know it does. How about for you, as an authoress? It depends on what aspect I took of writing. If I took an advertising approach to writing, I think that it would be a good market. I think writing.has always been a difficult thing to be placed in because its hit and miss. It all depends. If I go into the accounting field, even if computers become so advanced, you still have to have somebody to put the numbers in there. Any other thoughts on the job market? Anybody pessimistic? Astronomy is very competitive and the job outlook is not that good for the future. So thats why Im looking into computer science also as a minor, so Im sure thats one of the top best job outlooks. Being undecided, really not knowing where youre going to go is really tough to know. Certain fields obviously have good percentage rates of people getting through and getting placements. Certain some things obviously dont, so Im trying not to choose my field as
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far as whats going to get me necessarily a job. Id rather do something that I would enjoy doing. M: Lets say we fast forward to one year from today. Lets say youre all in school someplace. What I want you to do is picture yourself in college. What does it look like? Where are you? What are you doing? Whats going on around you. Can you picture that? Now draw a picture of it for me. Draw me that scene. Dont worry about your drawing skills. - (End of side one.) How is the art work coming? Ahight, who wants to show their work? Here we go. This is Joyces world in college. Explain whats going on here. Im at a party. And theres music going on and all the people. Everyones bald except for you, I see. What is that in the bubble? Thats the (?) Supposed to be standing by. Its just too tempting. And this is the library? Thats great! I like that. What have you got? This is me sitting in front of the computer. Messy room. Im in my dorm room. This is me in my very, very small room, sleeping through my alarm clock, buzzing like crazy. And thats about all. Very small bed in a very small room. Very small refrigerator. No roommate? Roommates underneath me. Hes down there somewhere. Nick? Whats yours? Im playing baseball. Im on the mound, pitching. Mike? This is kind of a split thing. The dorm life, studying and working on the computer and theres an observatory down there. Im studying stars. Thats me on stage. And the real actual auditorium-like seats because in the theater we
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have now, its actually a gym so we have to sit in weird chairs. M: R: M: R: M: R: Whats the play? I dont know. And youre the lead? I dont know...just there. Michelle? This is my picture in my very small dorm room, in my little loft with my roommate and Im reading a book because Im going to do an awful lot of reading. Charles? Mine is not just a picture. Its some symbols thrown together. Here weve got the book inside the middle. Book for the studies, and then weve got the goal post, either because Ill go there to play football or just to watch. Over heres the money side because youve always got to make money. Heres the bed. Ill probably never see it that much. The computer because youve got to work somewhere. The weights were something that we got started on in high school for football and I just continued it. And up here is my collection of swords that I have. Ill bring that with me. Im impressed. Almost all of you got studying or academics as part of your world in college. In the last group it was more beer bottles and partying and so on. So, very impressive. I have another little writing exercise I want to do here. I want you to rank order, in order of quality, the schools that are on the list. There are 11 of them and I want you to pick number 1,2,3...and this is just your general impression of the quality of the schools, from best to worst within that group. So, number one is the best of the group and number eleven is the worst. Go ahead and rank order. Done? Whats the best one? I put University of Iowa. Iowa. Iowa. Just because I knew more about that than anything else.
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How many Iowas? Four Iowas. I put Drake. How many Drakes? Two? I had Western Illinois. I didnt know....
(Al talking and laughing at once.)

R: M: R: R: I put St. Ambrose. Any other St. Ambrose? Okay, whats the number 1 l? Whats the worst of the lot? Western! Western.
(All talking and laughing at once.)

M: R: R: M: Any other worse? Loras. Norbert. Okay, three Norberts. Whats the difference between the best and the worst? What makes a school good? The town makes a big difference. The area. I dont know about the others, but I know Westerns in a very shitty town. Everybody agree with that? No. I used to live there. Its all publicity. If you heard about the school more youd probably like it more. Most of them are if youd heard about them youd probably like them better.
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Im glad you mentioned that because Id like to follow up on something else with that. Any other? You hear bad things, like Westerns a party school. Okay, so publicity could be positive or negative, right? What else? Resources. And what are some resources that count? Just building, library, dorm resources. Place to use computers if you dont own one. More modern. Anything else? What makes a school good or bad? Lets talk about that publicity issue for a minute. Have you heard anything about any of the schools on that list on the news? Iowa. Football. You hear sometimes about Iowa - their medical facility. And if theres a really bad trauma patient they fly them into the university hospital. St. Ambrose is on TV sometimes. They have a commercial. For what? An advertisement? Basically, yes. Sometimes they show football games or volleyball games on channel 11 or 12. Has anybody seen a commercial for a college? You mentioned St. Ambrose. Has anybody seen that one? You have? Whats it like? Its like in Fall. Theres like leaves all over. Thats the only thing I can remember. And theyve got like students walking around.
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Its one of those things you see it and click. Yeah, its not very exciting. Elevator music. Okay, so is it a turnoff? I would not necessarily say that I would not go to someplace because it had a bad commercial. So you described it as like elevator music, kind of. Are there better college commercials? I got sent a videotape from Brigham Young. Did you watch it? Yeah. Informative, I guess. Anybody else see a college videotape? A lot of colleges - some have videotapes like if you go to visit the campus. I the visitors center they have videotapes laying around you can pop in and check out. What is was getting to was a lot of times during football games and things the colleges playing the team, either one or both of them, will have little ads about their school during the program. Has anybody else seen a college video? Have you been sent one before? Has anyone just received a video in the mail? You can send for them. You can send for them. But I dont think I would get one unless I was absolutely top two, because its too much of a hassle to send them back. They let me keep mine. They just flat out sent it. I was interested in them so I just requested information and they just sent it to me.
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Ive seen one for a class Im taking now. Its just a class that I picked. Im not really going to major in it but the representative came in, took up the whole class period, talked about it, showed a videotape on it, showed whats a dorm room looked like, showed a little bit of class, then showed where the students go to hang out, stuff like that. Lets say we fast forward five years from now and for some reason all of you decide to get into marketing and advertising. Now your job is to work for colleges and help them get their word out in the best possible way, the appropriate way, to high school seniors. What are some of the things that you would do differently than what youre seeing right now happen to you and what youre seeing in your own process? Any ideas on that? More of a personal approach. I wouldnt write thousands of personal letters. You wouldnt send them out? Its hard to write thousands of personal letters to everyone that shows up at a college. What would be some examples of a personal approach? I dont know...a phone call? Are you getting phone calls? Oh, yeah. All the time. Do you like that? Most of them, no. How many are getting phone calls? Im getting phone calls from students, basically. They talk your ear off.
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Yeah, they talk forever and ask about...and the girls tell me about their homecoming what dress theyre wearing, and Im like, okay.... Anybody like the phone calls? I think if you were really seriously thinking about going there, there would be a purpose for it. But theyre just calling....1 think it was like, Iowa State is calling and they dont have my major and Im just talking to them for like 15 minutes and I didnt even realize that they didnt have it and finally I asked them and she said, No, we dont have it and so I just felt I was like wasting my time talking to her. Anybody have a good experience with phone calls? Well, I dont know. Usually the people are really friendly, but they tend to ask questions that benefit them directly. Like, Are you interested in coming here? and so on. They dont tell you all the benefits of their college, except maybe student-teacher ratio, or just basic things that are very generic stuff. And at times theyll tell you if theyre going to have a representative of their college at your school. Like, Ive gotten a couple of calls from Cornell telling me theyre going to have a representative at West High and if you can make it, stop by. And are those okay? Yeah, but they call on Sunday nights. They call at bad times, all the time. So, would you eliminate? If you were in charge of the marketing and the advertising, would you eliminate the phone calls? Or how would you handle that differently? I think Id improve them by maybe focusing on their specific areas of study and give them more information on that, instead of more general questions. We talked about letters - more personalized letters? Does that make a difference if they have your name on the letter? No.
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No. You canprogram a computer to just put your name on the letter and have the same letter printed out so many times. I was impressed because I went to Augustana visit day and I met with Beth Ford and she came and talked to us and she was very personal and she like actually hand wrote a letter to me and I thought that was.... so its not like youre just getting some letter that you know 50 other people got and a stamped signature on it. But you know these people cared. Anybody else receive hand written letters? Yes? And did that make an impact? It shows the personality and character of the school. It shows how personal they are. Because they can say, Oh, we give you lots of personal attention but if they write you a letter that says, Dear Student theyre sort of contradictory. Or, what the schools could do to save time, if they receive your name from ACTs, they could send out a flyer saying, What do you want to major in? and then youd send it back to them and then theyd know whether to bother with you or not. Maybe better off doing with paid postage or not. If youve got to find a stamp to send something back to them its just going into the garbage. Is Dear Student in a printed letter worse than a word-processed letter? If you saw something with your name on it versus something that was personalized..... Most of the time its the same thing. All you do is just type the different letters. Does it have any symbolic value to.you at all? No. Just cause its got my name on it doesnt mean its personalized. We just have a couple of minutes left and what Id like to do is tell you who my client is. Does anybody have any idea? I do.
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Alright, anybody else? Now, why do you know? Because I work here, so you might want to call on somebody else. Well thats good then; we didnt really reveal. Our client is St. Ambrose and they hired us because they wanted us to get in touch with prospective students and talk about all the things we talked about today and get some feedback on this whole process and make it work right for them. Now that you know that, any advice for them? Commercial sucks. Thats fair. No consequences whatsoever. Theyre grateful that you.... so anybody agree about the commercial, or any other comments on that? Most Ive heard about St. Ambrose is from my relatives. I had a sister graduating from St. Ambrose with a CPA. Im having a cousin go to St. Ambrose who is graduating this year with a degree in criminal law or something where he can be a correction officer. I was pretty impressed with their (?) and a couple of friends in their library. Their Internet connection was pretty fast. I was impressed with that. What about compared with others do? What are they doing better? What are they doing worse in terms of what youre involved with right now? Have you all heard from them? Any thoughts on that? Its hard to say one schools better from another for what they give you. Its what youre looking for in a school. What about the way that youre being...the experience that youre having now as a prospective student, versus other places. Is it pretty much the same? Do they stand out in any way? Should they improve in any ways in terms of the way theyre corresponding with you or the sort of relationship they have with you? I find theyre not as aggressive as schools that.... They dont pester you. What are the schools that are pestering you?
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Cornell. Mt. Mercy. I have no intention of ever walking into.... I have only received like two or three things from St. Ambrose since Ive taken the ACTs and it came back. Is it not enough information? Its local, so you can find out if you want to. Its not like you got to go anywhere. Especially if theyre sending the same stuff to students outside of the state or this area.... I dont know. I havent had a phone call from there. So I havent had to hang up on anybody from there yet. Has anyone received a phone call from anyone there yet? They called me but I wasnt home. Did they want you to call back? No. They always say theyre going to call back. Any other feedback or advice for them? A couple of my really good friends are going there. One of them is a junior and another one is a freshman there this year. They are happy with the experience theyre getting. My assistant football coach goes there. He likes it.
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(Several people talking at once.)

M: R: Were going to wrap up. Is there anything at all you wanted to comment on? When we were talking about what colleges could do better as far as getting students? I
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think some of the brochures..... I think a very important part of the college life is the experience that youre going to be living more than likely for four years, and some places dont include enough about the community and the lifestyle that youre going to be living while youre there. Its more academics. But we need to know about the community. Like the dorm rooms and the student life and activities and things. R: Or that, say you go to Iowa. You know youre going to need a job, so you might want to know the hiring percentage around there or the certain places to go or if youre a student, the certain hours or stuff like that. Good. Youve been very, very helpful. Thanks for coming out.
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Appendix A: Focus Group Transcripts Prospective Students, Group 1 Prospective Students, Group 2

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Appendix A: Focus Group Transcripts Prospective Students, Group 1 Prospective Students, Group 2

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APPENDIX A: FOCUS GROUP TRANSCRIPTS Prospective students, Group 1 Prospective students, Group 2

(introductory remarks and explanation of group process.) Tell me where you go to

Are you from this area? Yes.

Im Brianna. I go to Assumption. Im going to go to Ambrose and study criminal justice

(Introductory remarks and explanation of group process.)

(Al talking and laughing at once.)

(All talking and laughing at once.)

(Several people talking at once.)

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