Harvard University admissions announced its plans to cut down on travel outreach last month, and now Penn plans to do the same.
Dean of Admissions Eric Furda said he expects "to scale back in the fall" and find "more cost-effective ways of recruitment than planes, trains and automobiles."
He noted that the Penn admissions office "has not experienced any cutbacks in funding" and the changes "will not be drastic."
Exploring College Options, he explained, will be Penn's - and Harvard's - "primary travel in the spring."
ECO is a special recruitment program sponsored by the undergraduate admissions offices of Penn, Harvard, Duke University, Georgetown University and Stanford University.
Furda agreed with Harvard Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons, who told the Harvard Crimson, "Because we will be contacting people in a more robust way in the mail and online, we believe we will be more effective rather than less effective because we are going directly to the individuals."
Penn Admissions will manage costs and conserve resources by only mailing printed materials to students who have already indicated their interest in Penn online, Furda wrote in an e-mail.
And next year, Admissions will also spend less on overtime and temporary staff during the peak season.
Furda noted that funding is not being reduced for Penn Previews.
"We want to put our best forward as families invest their time and money to visit our city and campus, so we are not cutting back on resources," he wrote.
Michele Hernandez, president of Hernandez College Consulting, explained that as a former admissions officer, she typically visited four or five high schools per day over the course of several months.
In her experience, "half the time no one showed up (schedule conflict, poor advertising of the event, etc.) or we ended up pulling kids out of an important class to hear us talk," she wrote in an e-mail.
She said cutting back on travel is a logical choice.
"Often the schools visits are a waste of time and money," she wrote in an e-mail. "Nowadays with so many students able to do research online, I think everyone knows that Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, etc. are great schools. No need to visit to get that across."
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