Arizona State University Case Study

It’s 1:30 P.M. and an Asian undergraduate researcher clad in a glaringly sterile-white HAZMAT suit is sitting at her lab bench, meticulously transferring contents from a pipette to a Petri dish. Machines tinker in the back, and computer screens buzz and glow with data. At a different college in the United States, an African-American undergraduate is in his room casually dressed in gym shorts and a Nike t-shirt, laughing and gaming with a group of friends with music blaring in the background. Both the researcher and the gamer are presented as students in admissions videos that their respective universities have posted online to serve as recruitment tools. The researcher is an undergraduate at Arizona State University, an institution widely regarded …show more content…
Arizona holds a reputation for wild parties and a remarkably successful athletic department, and for good reason. Due to this reputation, ASU does not need to focus on recruiting All-American high-school football players or frat-bros, but rather, on applicants that plan on attending ASU for the education itself. As such, ASU needs to sell the value of its education and the numerous scholarly opportunities available accompanying said education. This target audience of legitimate students is Arizona’s real obstacle. Harvard, on the other hand, has no need to recruit students for its academic program, given its education’s world-class reputation. Harvard faces the opposite dilemma, and needs to reel in applicants uncertain of its social climate and programs other than academics. Harvard’s reputation is both a curse and a blessing, acquiring a plethora of extremely motivated and talented applicants, but warding off applicants with a pre-conception of the general attitude at Harvard itself. Harvard’s recruitment video is targeting applicants who want to attend Harvard, but also be part of a genuinely social …show more content…
“Excellence at ASU”, depicts ASU as an institution devoted towards research, innovation, and scientific pursuits, while “Anything Could Happen at Harvard” shows that Harvard is really about socializing and enjoying life. Arizona State is targeting applicants who are unsure about the quality of the academic environment at ASU, while Harvard is focusing on applicants uncertain about the quality of the social climate at Harvard itself. While both videos have their differences, it becomes clear that they both make use of similar persuasive tools. ASU showed research clips and used Nobel laureate speakers to vouch for the scholarly side of Arizona, while Harvard threw up clips of friends having fun and hanging out, and used Jeremy Lin as an example to show the sides of Harvard not immediately apparent from its name. It’s 4:30 P.M. and the cameras have stopped rolling for the recruitment video the schools are filming. The ASU undergrad researcher has just sterilized all her equipment and put up her gear. She leaves the research center, zooming away on a skateboard to her sorority house, and gets ready for the party coming up later that night. Over in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the gamer undergrad is biking to the library with a bag full of textbooks, prepared for a long night of studying. It’s important to understand that not everything that is chosen to be shown

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