Last week, I wrote a post entitled “The College Admissions Process Fantasy (part I). What I was trying to point out is that the standard, accepted, by-the-book process for applying to college that you read about in U.S. News and World Report and elsewhere is only really pursued by a sub-set of mostly affluent college-bound high school students.

The reason I wrote this post is because I wanted to caution those involved with marketing an individual institution from falling into assumptions that did not apply in their case. In the back of my mind was a large research study I had read which was competent and very expensive but was premised on this standard model in ways that made it useless to the institution that had purchased it. This is a widespread problem: the whole industry of consultants and designers of educational marketing campaigns presume a process that is often not accurate. And it’s not just consultants. Many admissions offices make management decisions based on the standard model when in fact it doesn’t apply to the circumstance of their institution. It is very important for institutions to develop an accurate picture of how students actually find their way to their institution.

Before I leave this topic, I need to make one further point. It’s not just admissions offices, consultants and mainstream media who mistakenly overestimate the proportion of college-bound students who pursue the standard model for getting into college. It is also high school students and their families themselves. The fantasy of how you get into college has pervaded mainstream culture. It’s something you see on T.V. There are many students and parents who get seduced by the fantasy even though it is really not suited to their financial and cultural resources.

A disproportionate number of the families who get distracted by the college admissions fantasy are of-color or immigrants but it is certainly not exclusively so. Many middle class families (as opposed to upper-middle-class) also waste time believing in the steps of the standard process. There are many more cases of this on the East Coast than on the West because in the West the prevailing assumption is that students will attend a public and often local institution. The mythology of going away from home to an expensive private college is much stronger in the East.

So here’s the tricky part – if you’re marketing an institution that doesn’t fall into the standard admissions process model, you still need to take it into account. There may be key moments in the admissions process when your prospects will not be thinking of you. They will be pursuing other more prestigious options that at the end of the day will not pan out. During those moments, you will not be able to get them to pay attention by competing with the fantasy. They don’t want to hear about you. They want to believe that the process is going to work out for them. A lot of your business is done at the end of the game, once the fantasy has burst.

This is an extremely tricky dynamic. There is not one simple solution in every case. What is really required is an enormous amount of detailed research of your specific admissions circumstances so you can understand all the forces at play. The college admissions process fantasy may not work well for your institution but because it has pervaded our culture to such an extent it needs to inform your strategy.