Prospective students aren’t just browsing your website, but they’re imagining their future. Will they find someone who looks like them, overcame similar challenges, or succeeded in a field they love? That’s why alumni features are so valuable.
Authentic narratives from graduates serve as powerful testimonials, showcasing your institution's transformative impact. Yet, these stories often remain underutilized, hidden in isolated news articles, or confined to specific campaign pages.
Alumni stories go beyond traditional testimonials because they provide emotional resonance and tangible proof of your college or university’s value, especially for Gen Z and Gen Alpha students who place so much importance on social proof and real-world outcomes. Highlighting successful alumni careers can go a long way in demonstrating the return on investment for prospective students. In addition, showcasing a diverse array of alumni stories reflects the range of experiences and paths for different types of students. Note, though, that you can use personalization techniques to ensure that prospective students get to see the stories that resonate most with them based on their program interests, topics they’re passionate about, their background, or other demographics. For example, a prospective international student will appreciate and feel encouraged by stories of alumni from the same country. Career changers who are interested in finishing the degree they started many years ago will be relieved to see stories of alumni who were in their shoes and successfully balanced job responsibilities, family life, and coursework. Real stories foster a deeper connection and trust with both prospective students and their families.
The University of Richmond's UR Now platform features compelling alumni narratives, such as the story of James Michael Mahoney and Diana Blackburn, who rekindled their college romance decades later. UR’s As Spiders Do podcast also shares firsthand accounts of alumni journeys, providing prospective students with relatable success stories.
The University of Rochester's Rochester Review magazine and alumni website spotlight graduates making significant impacts globally. For instance, Bhaskar Pant ’72 shares insights from his career in media and cultural awareness, exemplifying the university's commitment to producing global changemakers.
Northwestern's alumni magazine features diverse stories, including profiles of alumni contributing to the arts, sciences, and public service. These narratives not only celebrate alumni achievements but also serve as inspiration for prospective students envisioning their future paths.
Indiana University's 21st Century Scholars Program showcases alumni like Cece Taylor, who transitioned from a scholarship recipient to a professional in employee engagement. Such stories highlight the university's role in facilitating upward mobility and career readiness.
Texas A&M honors its distinguished alumni through detailed profiles, such as that of Hon. Richard A. Smith ’59, who built a successful real estate company and served in the Texas House of Representatives. These stories underscore the university's emphasis on leadership and service.
Implementing alumni stories across your digital platforms doesn't have to be resource-intensive. Here are ideas to integrate and scale these narratives:
Develop a standard template for alumni profiles, including elements like graduation year, major, career highlights, personal anecdotes, quotes, and images. This streamlines content creation and ensures a cohesive presentation. Pro Tip: Utilize Cascade CMS's Blocks or Content Types to create reusable templates. This enables departments to contribute stories efficiently by entering information into structured fields and making them easier to share across multiple pages, sites, and platforms.
You don’t have to go it alone. Use the incredible resources available to you by engaging faculty, career services, and alumni relations to identify and gather alumni stories. Providing them with a simple submission form can facilitate the collection of diverse narratives. You may also have a form on your site for interested alumni, encourage them to share their stories, and inspire prospective students, especially when higher education has been tasked with proving its value more strongly than before. Include prompts about career paths, memorable moments on campus, advice for current students, and the impact that their degree has had on their career and life in general.
To get the most out of your alumni stories, you want to ensure your content can be filtered and dynamically displayed for maximum impact. Implement tags for different types of industries, graduation years, or geographic locations. For example, you could feature alumni working in healthcare or financial services on relevant program pages or highlight success stories of international students or online students on the appropriate pages and sections.
Alumni stories are not just great for one page or campaign. They are much more versatile. A single well-crafted profile can be repurposed across multiple channels and formats, increasing its ROI and reach. How about a quote graphic for Instagram or LinkedIn, a student-focused testimonial in an admissions email, a success story slide in an enrollment presentation, a featured segment in a virtual tour or info session, or a blurb in a program brochure or print piece?
But to unlock this value, the content must be portable. Therefore, it’s crucial that you structure your content in a way that allows it to travel easily between systems, formats, and audiences. This involves managing your stories in structured fields and blocks rather than in one monolithic chunk. Portability ensures your team doesn’t have to recreate content for each channel, as it is flexible to handle different formats. It also ensures consistency in messaging and helps surface relevant alumni narratives exactly when and where your audience needs them most. For example, a Nursing alum’s quote can live on the Nursing program page, appear in an email about outcomes, and be used in a social series during National Nurses Week, all from a single source.
Alumni stories are invaluable assets in illustrating your institution's real-world impact. By systematically collecting and showcasing these narratives, you honor your graduates and provide prospective students with relatable and inspiring examples of success.
Last Updated: May 15, 2025 12:00 AM
