Do students care more about rankings or what is best for them?

As strategy season is around the corner many of us are still dusting ourselves off and assessing the last year before we start to plan for the next recruitment cycle. I thought it might be a great time to share some very interesting snippets of insight that I have delved into for my most recent piece of consultancy.

For those who have worked closely with me previously, you will know how I feel about university rankings and in particular, how I feel about the use of rankings within marketing campaigns. I am all for a proof point but I am sure many of us have debated what does a university ranking really mean to a prospective student? And depending on which table, and where your institution has landed this year - how much has your stance changed from the year before? Are you going to have it on all of your banner ads, plastered around campus, or mentioned quietly a few pages into your prospectus? I have worked in different institutions where all of these approaches have been used.

Now, I will be clear – of course I think that rankings are important to students. And of course they are important to many internal and external stakeholders – but are they everything? As a marketeer there is little we can do with a ranking, whether it be high or low, or neatly in the ‘in-between’. But what we care about most is what is important to students and this is what seems to be changing.

Alistair Rennie and Jonny Protheroe, researchers at Google’s insights, released an incredibly interesting report on purchasers’ behaviours and the decision-making process in the summer of 2020. If you haven’t heard about this, you had a good excuse in the busy months of July and August last year, but I would recommend checking it out. The ‘messy middle’ of a consumer's buying journey is incredibly pertinent to prospective students and their parents when deciding which university to enquire about, which one they book to attend an open day at, or download a prospectus from, apply to, and finally firm with. The amount of touch points, explorations, and evaluations that they go through must be one of the most on any buying decision making process, doesn’t it?

The research highlights so many interesting areas, but one that had me go down a rabbit hole was the increase in worldwide searches for ‘best’ versus a decline in search interest for ‘cheap’.

‘Best’ can mean so many different things to different people. Rankings and how they are used within marketing can certainly be a symbolism of being the best or better than competitors. However, this is where it gets even more interesting...

Whilst doing some digging, I came across a report by Seers, also released in August 2020. They did a large-scale keyword analysis to gain insight into how audiences are searching pre-pandemic vs post-pandemic and they analysed 24 months of keyword data (over 150K unique terms). I was extremely interested to see that they too had seen an increase in searches for ‘best’, with students placing more significant importance on finding the best - searches for the best course or university increased by 7% in 2020. But what was even more fascinating, was over the same period, searches for course or university ‘rankings’ had declined by 5%.

Insights that The Student Room shared recently also support the theory of rankings being less important to students. In their NCO Clearing report the top factors students have said they considered when choosing a university in 2020 clearing were course availability, entry requirements, location, and career prospects. However, two years previously in 2018 the top three factors were course content, location, and rankings.

With Google reporting that mobile searches for “___ Best for me” grew by 60% in two years, students are searching what is the “Best haircut for me”, “Best running shoes for me”, and they are certainly wanting to know what will be the “Best University for me”.

As we all move to an even more digital journey to make purchasing decisions, and students and their parents spend longer researching university choices online, the best university for them becomes more important than simply the best perceived university by rankings. We all know that prospective students and Gen Z want a tailored experience and expect a personalised approach - universities who do this will have already seen great responses. I recommend instead of shouting your ranking from your tallest building, take the time to understand what your institution can truly offer students, what students will benefit the most from - if they choose you, and make sure they can find and understand why you are the best (for them).