If you work in admissions or enrollment, you already know the script. You’ve sat through tours where the guide rattles off lines you could mouth along to, and you’ve probably read brochures that could’ve been swapped with the school down the street.
At Ologie, we’ve logged a lot of campus visits over the years. One thing is clear: higher ed loves its greatest hits.
Back in 2015, we poked fun with our first Admissions Lingo Bingo card. This year, we pulled it back out…and not much has changed. The classics are still everywhere, so here’s the refreshed board.
(Fair warning: you might hit BINGO before the tour guide even points out the library.)
Everybody’s Bingo Card Looks the Same
Safe language glides through approvals, looks neat in a deck, and fills space when deadlines loom.
But safe disappears fast.
Students skim ten schools in an afternoon. If everyone promises the same “life-changing experience,” they all blur together. When your copy could live just as easily on your rival’s website, you’ve stopped telling a story and started playing cover band.
What’s Not on the Bingo Card
Here’s our rule of thumb: if it lands on the bingo card, pause. Then ask, what’s a story only we could tell?
Every campus has them: the first-years who race canoes across the fountain, the alum who turned a dorm-room hustle into a company and came back to hire classmates, the waffle bar that sealed the deal for one student.
Those are proof points that tour guides grin about, parents snap photos of, students text their friends mid-visit. If you can’t spot a detail like that in your draft, odds are you don’t have a story yet.
What’s on Your Bingo Card?
This edition of Admissions Lingo Bingo is for the pros who know these lines by heart. Print it, bring it to your next staff meeting, and keep score on your next tour. Add your own squares, and we’ll stash them for the 2026 version.
And if you’re filling the board too fast? That’s your cue to retire the slogans or trade “transformative journeys” for waffle bars.
The stories that stick are the ones no other campus could claim.
Bingo.
