Open Evening Goodybags

Whether you’re trying to recruit students to your school / college, 6th form or subject, first-impressions are important and this idea I’ve lifted from the Psychology Twitter account at Thornton College is one that might be worth thinking about.

Put simply, every student who wants to talk to you about doing psychology / sociology is given a complementary Goodybag containing a selection of treats and information designed to give them a favourable impression of you (the treats) and the subject (the information). In the case of Thornton College’s Psychology department their Goodybag contains:

• course information,
• a bit of pop psychology (such as optical illusions and fun facts),
• careers information,
• a chocolate,
• an item of stationery.

While the contents of the bag are clearly going to be constrained by the funds you have available – a gold Rolex watch in every bag, for example, might be an alluring item to include, but I’m guessing that’s probably out of the price range of most schools and colleges – it should be possible to put together an informative Goodybag that also contains one or two less essential treats.

If I were creating a relatively inexpensive Goodybag (Amazon, for example, sell 50 candy stripe paper bags for £1.50) I’d look to include things like a range of cards printed with:

• course information,
• careers information,
• some simple “What is Sociology? definitions,
• a few lateral thinking puzzles (sociologists need to be good at thinking around corners),
• selected sociological quotes,
• a sweet of some kind (chocolate mint, lollipop),
• pen or small pad of paper.
• raffle ticket (drawn at the end of the evening, winner gets a small “sociological prize”).