At about this time, almost every respectable US and UK university will be pushing their representatives around the world, trying to persuade their applicants to accept their offers. On this blog alone, we’ve highlighted a couple of universities taking the exhibition (UCL) and reception (Warwick) routes.

Those were United Kingdom universities of course. What about American universities, with their technological and IT prowess? Well, I’ve recently been alerted to Cornell University’s “student chats”. Certain departments of the university are setting up web chat room sessions for certain dates, where admissions officers and current undergraduates will be available to answer questions by potential first-years (i.e. admitted students).

Of course, there’s also the overall university web chat session for those that end up missing their departmental chat session. In fact, you can even see the schedule for Cornell’s online chats at their admissions website.

So, what do you think? How useful do you think these sessions are? Are they simply a waste of effort or a genuine means to provide solid information to potential students?