How to Host a Virtual Open House for Your College

By Let's Mingle · Published 1 October 2026

A good campus visit is not the presentation in the main hall. It is the ten minutes a nervous applicant spends talking to a second-year student who was in their shoes a year ago, or the parent who finally gets a straight answer about financial aid. A virtual open house for your college should be built around those conversations, not around slides. This guide covers how to set one up, staff it, keep it safe and run it on the day.

What families actually want from an open house

Prospective students already have your website, your brochure and probably a few recorded videos. What they cannot get from those is an unscripted answer from a real person. Plan your event around the questions families bring:

"What is it actually like to study here?"
"Will I fit in if I'm the first in my family to go to college?"
"How much will this cost us, really?"
"What do engineering students do in their first year?"
"Is it safe? Where do people live?"

Each of these is best answered in a small group, by the right person, with room for follow-up questions. A webinar with a Q&A box handles one question at a time and leaves everyone else waiting. An open house in a mingling space lets twenty small conversations run at once.

Set up the room around topics

The simplest structure is one table per topic or program, each staffed by someone who knows the answers. Visitors browse, join the table they care about, and move on when they're ready.

Choosing your groups

In Let's Mingle, hosts can create permanent groups: named groups that sit in the room, empty, until someone joins, and stay there until a host deletes them. Visitors see every group as soon as they arrive and click one to join. Only hosts can rename them, so the layout stays as you planned it. The help pages cover how to set them up.

A starting layout for a mid-sized college:

Group name	Staffed by	What it covers
Welcome desk	Admissions officer	Orientation, "where should I start?"
Ask a current student	2–3 student ambassadors	Daily life, classes, friends, honest opinions
Financial aid	Financial aid advisor	Costs, scholarships, deadlines, forms
Applying and deadlines	Admissions officer	Essays, requirements, application timeline
Engineering	Faculty member + student	Courses, labs, first-year projects
Business	Faculty member + student	Program structure, internships
Arts and humanities	Faculty member + student	Majors, portfolios, small classes
Housing and campus life	Residence life staff	Dorms, dining, clubs, safety
For parents and guardians	Staff member	Parent-specific questions
International applicants	International office	Visas, language requirements, arrival

Keep it to around ten groups for a first event. More than twelve and visitors spend their time scanning instead of talking. If you have many programs, group them by school or faculty rather than giving each major its own table.

A separate table for parents

Many students will speak more openly without a parent beside them, and many parents have questions they'd rather not ask in front of their child. A dedicated parents' table solves both. It also gives a parent somewhere to go while their teenager talks to a current student, which is roughly what happens on a physical campus tour.

Staffing the event

The most common mistake is understaffing the popular tables. "Ask a current student" and "Financial aid" will be busy all evening. A single faculty table for a niche program might see a handful of visitors.

How many people you need

As a rough guide, plan one staff member or ambassador for every 8 to 12 expected visitors, with extra cover on the busiest groups. For an event expecting 120 visitors, that means 10 to 15 people on the day:

2 hosts running the room
3 student ambassadors, so "Ask a current student" can split into two conversations when it gets crowded
2 financial aid advisors
1 admissions officer on the welcome desk, 1 on applications
1 person per program table
1 floater who goes wherever a queue is forming

Briefing your student ambassadors

Students are your best asset and need the clearest guidance. Before the event, cover:

Be honest. Families can tell when an answer is scripted. "The first month is hard, here's what helped me" is more reassuring than "everyone loves it."
Know when to hand off. Questions about money, visas or disability support go to staff. Ambassadors should say "great question, the financial aid table can answer that properly" and point to it.
Pull quiet people in. If someone has been listening for five minutes, ask them directly: "What are you thinking of studying?"
Keep personal contact details private. Ambassadors shouldn't share phone numbers or personal social accounts with prospective students.

Staff need breaks too

A three-hour open house is tiring. Rota people so nobody staffs a busy table for more than 60 to 75 minutes without a break. Staff can set their status to Away while they step out, so visitors can see they are not available rather than talking to a frozen tile.

Safeguarding and moderation

You will have minors in the room, so treat safeguarding as part of the plan, not an afterthought. Follow your institution's own safeguarding policy first. The points below are about how the room supports it.

Who can get in

Require sign-in. Turning on Require Google sign-in means every visitor joins with a Google account instead of just typing a display name. That makes it harder for someone to drop in anonymously.
Share the link with registered visitors only. Send it in the confirmation email rather than posting it publicly.
Ask for clear display names. Suggest the format "First name, state or country, intended major" for students and "First name, parent" for parents.

Who is watching the room

Have at least two hosts. Hosts have equal powers, so either can act. One host can stay on the overview of the room while the other handles messages and broadcasts.
Use the visibility of the room. Because everyone can see who is talking with whom, hosts can spot a conversation that has drifted away from the staffed groups and check in.
Keep staff in staffed groups. Ask ambassadors to stay in the named groups rather than starting private one-to-one conversations with prospective students. It protects them as well as the visitors.
Remove people when needed. Hosts can ban someone from the space. Agree in advance who makes that call so nobody hesitates on the night.

What the room does on its own

Cameras and microphones start off when people join, and switching to a new conversation never turns a microphone on. A host cannot unmute anyone either. Normally only the people in a conversation can hear each other. Conversations are not recorded by the app, which is worth mentioning to families who may be uneasy about it.

Run of show for a two-hour evening

Evenings work best for families, typically starting between 6 and 7 pm in your main applicant time zone. If you recruit internationally, consider a second session at a different time using the same link.

-0:30 Staff arrive. Hosts check every group is in place. Ambassadors and staff join their tables and test their audio.
0:00 Doors open. Visitors arrive and join the welcome desk or browse. Hosts post an Announcement: "Welcome! Click any table to join the conversation. Staff are in every group."
0:10 Welcome from the dean or director of admissions. Two to three minutes using Broadcast video so everyone sees and hears it, wherever they are. Broadcasting does not move anyone out of their conversation. Keep it short: who you are, how the evening works, and that nobody needs to unmute to listen.
0:15–0:55 Open tables. Visitors move between groups. Hosts watch for crowded tables and send the floater over.
0:55 Midpoint nudge. Use Message everyone: "Haven't visited Financial aid or Housing yet? Both have space right now."
1:00–1:45 Open tables continue. This is often the busiest stretch, as families who arrived late catch up.
1:45 Last call. Broadcast audio from a host: "Fifteen minutes left. If there's one question you haven't asked, now is the time."
2:00 Close. A short thank-you broadcast with next steps: application deadlines, campus visit dates, where to find the recording of the main presentation if you have one elsewhere.
2:00–2:15 Staff debrief. Stay in the room briefly once visitors leave, and note common questions while they are fresh.

Practical details

Desktop and phone both work. Many teenagers will join from a phone. Tell families there's nothing to download.
Test the room beforehand. Run a 30-minute rehearsal with your ambassadors a few days before. The demo room is also useful for showing staff what moving between groups feels like.
Reuse the link. The same space link works for every open house, so you can keep one room for the whole recruitment season and simply update the groups.
For large events, talk to us first. Comfortable room sizes are still being measured during the beta. If you expect several hundred visitors at once, get in touch with us before you send invitations.

If you also run events for admitted students or graduates, the formats overlap. See the guides to a virtual alumni mixer and virtual conference networking, and for a lighter, social format, virtual speed networking works well for admitted-student days. For more on why presentation-led formats struggle, see why most virtual networking events fail.

Bringing it together

A virtual open house works when families can find the right person and ask their real question without waiting their turn in a chat box. Set up clearly named groups for each topic, put your most popular groups under extra staff, brief your student ambassadors on honesty and hand-offs, and treat sign-in and moderation as part of the plan from the start. The rest is what you already do well on campus: being welcoming, being straight with people, and making a nervous seventeen-year-old feel like they could belong.