Insights into Higher Education Recruiting in the Middle East, North Africa & Eurasia

This is the post office building on Tahlia Street in Jeddah.This isn’t a tiny little street where there is a few stores here and there. This is the “main drag” of the city and is lined with every store you can think of from Dior and Bulgari to Starbucks and Payless Shoes.

At our last Visa Briefing in Beirut, Lebanon the AMIDEAST country director Ms. Barbara Batlouni bluntly said to the group “Guys, please stop trying to mail stuff to these students. A few years ago the government decided to name all the streets, no one in Beirut knows the name of their street. I’ve lived in my house for 13 years and I can tell you exactly how to get here, but I have no idea the official name of the street or my house number”.  She is not exaggerating. Students use the AMIDEAST office PO Box to receive their I-20′s and SAT/GMAT results.

Here are my suggestions for working with students from the Middle East:

1. Do not ask students for their mailing address during your Initial Point of Contact – whether its a form on your website, a booth at a fair in the country

2. Request a phone number, students are always happy to give you their cell phone number

3. Ask for the student’s mailing address ONLY once their application is started: this will ensure that no made up address ends up in your database.

4. FedEx delivers to PO Boxes in the Middle East. Always. They do not deliver to PO Boxes domestically but do in the entire Middle East.

The mail system in the entire region is a complete disaster. Mail can arrive if you send something via regular post, however, if you are sending the students anything time sensitive (such as their housing forms) please either consider sending it along with the I-20 in the courier package OR switch to an online form.

In the past I had often been required to fill out an address for my (parent’s) home in Saudi. I used a hodgepodge of close by street names and no-longer-in-existence landmarks to complete that part of the form. Once I knew I needed to make sure the address was 100% correct and deliverable I would call Dad and ask for his office PO Box.  Its easier to rely on email and phone rather than post. Let’s not even discuss the big name school that spent $60K on a direct mail campaign to Saudi Arabia.  Yeeesh…

If you are traveling with us this Fall expect that the student registrations from the fair will NOT have  a mailing address included – just all the more important contact information and student data you need to collect

- Wassan

During the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Higher Education fair in Riyadh, Arab News (the largest English language newspaper in the Middle East) had a number of articles on the topic of education.  I thought this one would be interesting to share as I’ve had this same discussion with many university admissions officers: Does the Saudi education system prepare students sufficiently to study overseas?

I doubt I’ll hear many international admissions people argue against this, but I am interested to hear your comments.  Personally I feel that the standard way of learning in all of the Middle East (rote memorization, regurgitation, and no discussion) leads to the lack of cognitive thinking that is the basis for US-style education especially at the University level.   Combine that with the language issue and you have a student that’s primed to fail.

Read the Arab News article here: http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/education_supplement/article366841.ece

See you at NAFSA (Booth #750)

- Wassan

Last year at the Washington International Education Conference we were walked through an impressive back-end dashboard that the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission was using to keep track of students currently studying in the US.  The system allowed counselors at SACM to receive automated messages when a students GPA dipped below a certain point or when a student dropped a class that could potentially put their visa in jeopardy.  It also allowed students to view their requirements, reminders about I-20 information and visas, see when their disbursements were coming, and quite a bit more.  We thought the system was a huge improvement and allowed the counselors to free up some of their phone time spent responding to questions the students could answer themselves.

Yesterday the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) in Saudi Arabia announced the release of their official iPhone app (so exciting!). The iPhone app (there is an android version, but I have an iPhone, so that’s the app I played with!) includes information aimed at students including recent news from MoHE,  recommended universities database, following up on application status, student eportal and a listing of the different cultural and educational offices around the world.  Pretty good stuff. There were some issues with the university search, but its a good starting point.

Some screen shots:

Main menu:

Example of a search for “Virginia” in the “recommended colleges” section

We are excited to announce the US Educational Group Middle East Fall 2011 Tour Schedule
Beirut, Lebanon                    October 23rd
Amman, Jordan                    October 25th
Dammam, Saudi Arabia     October 27th
Kuwait City, Kuwait             October 29th
Manama, Bahrain                 October 31st
Muscat, Oman                       November 2nd
Doha, Qatar                            November 5th
Dubai, UAE                             November 7th
Option City:
Damascus, Syria                  November 10th

You can find more details on the tour on our website we can’t wait to head to Damascus – we know it will be an amazing experience in an emerging market!