US Educational Group » Student Recruitment

Mailing Addresses in the Middle East

admin — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:51:55 +0000

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

US Educational Group Fall 2011 Middle East Tour We are excited to announce the US Educational Group Middle...

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Saudi Ministry of Higher Education Continues Student-side Improvements

admin — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:59:55 +0000

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

Saudi Students in US Ecstatic over Education Benefits When King Abdullah announced last week that additional scholarship programs...
Aramco Continues to Innovate with Exchanges & Education For decades Saudi Aramco has been the front runner in...

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US Educational Group Fall 2011 Middle East Tour

Wassan — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:17:04 +0000

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!

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Saudi Students in US Ecstatic over Education Benefits

admin — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:06:42 +0000

When King Abdullah announced last week that additional scholarship programs were announced for Saudi Arabian students studying abroad, we immediately began making calls to see whether community colleges and non-scholarship majors were going to be included. However, it seems that the actual rules and regulations from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) in Saudi Arabia have not changed, but this is more of a “one time deal” giving ALL 7,000 students in the US as “self funded” students a scholarship.

In this oddly worded article from Arab News you can read more about the details of the scholarship increase and what it means to current students in the US: http://bit.ly/SaudiStudentBenefits

I do hope that this means students in atypical majors will soon start seeing scholarship benefits as it still does not seem to make sense to not allow a scholarship to an A+ student heading to University of Southern California to study film making and script writing but to give a scholarship to a D student going to a low-tier university to study business. Lets hope that MOHE will begin to see those changes can bring huge benefits to the country by allowing students to go towards a major they are more apt to succeed in!

- wassan

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International Student Ambassadors – Keeping in Touch with Alumni

Joseph — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:48:46 +0000

What better way is there to stay in touch with Alumni, keep them engaged with the University and have a brand ambassador overseas? More universities are connecting with students overseas with more formalized “International Student Ambassadors” that ever before. An excellent idea, simple to implement.

Identify 10-30 students graduating and returning to their home country
This is as simple as hosting an ice-cream social, a pizza party, or another “bon voyage” party at the International Students Center/Office. Talk for a few minutes about how important Alumni are to your university, and how important international Alumni are to the university name. By allowing them to have an official title such as “International Student Ambassador” you can create a stronger buy in from the student.
Assign more students to countries with a higher prospective base
If you are physically recruiting students from certain countries (China, India, Middle East, etc) be sure to assign more than one student ambassador to the region. This will reduce the number of emails each student receives, giving y0u a better chance that they will continue responding to questions.
Provide them with a well-written Q&A to use in their responses
To help your alumni answer many of the basic questions, it would be helpful to provide them with a Q&A written in an informal and relaxed tone, allowing them to use bits and pieces as they respond. Again, this ensures timely responses and better interaction between the Alum & Prospective student.
Give them a few “outs” to move the inquiry towards admissions
Have a list of some closing phrases to allow them to move the back & forth emails towards an admissions counselor. This uses their time efficiently and sends the prospective student to the admissions personnel ready to engage and guide them through the personalized application process

“I loved Kalamazoo, and I know you will too, Karen in admissions is interested in helping you through the admissions process – just like she helped me!”
Update your alumni list!
Be sure to keep in touch with your alumni ambassadors and update your list every 6 months. You want to be sure the ambassadors are responding to emails, and if they are getting too many, you need to address that issue immediately. The on-going connection with the university as well as the growing alumni base from the country should be a great asset to the campus for years to come.

Some great examples of programs implementing a similar idea:

University of Chicago
Iowa State University
Virginia Tech
Clemson University
University of Minnesota

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Excited about our March 2010 tour – Middle East + Central Asia!

Wassan — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:50:39 +0000

With our Fall 2010 fair already full and on track, I am already getting excited about our March 2010 tour. Its always great to go back to the Middle East, but in the Spring we will be heading into Central Asia as well. Personally, I can’t wait to go back to Almaty, Kazakhstan – but I’m not sure if I will make it on a roller coaster again this time. The students we met last March were amazing, intelligent, and very excited to speak with US colleges and universities.

I received these photos via twitter (thanks @gordon_ryan) and had to share them with you all. You will not believe these amazing shots of Uzbekistan, Dagestan, Bukhara, Russia are 100 years old. The photography is amazing, as is the use of color photography which was so primitive at that time.

http://bit.ly/dkEPPD

Hope you enjoy them & consider visiting some of these countries with us in the Spring!

Amman, Jordan March 27th
Manama, Bahrain March 29th
Kuwait City, Kuwait March 31st
Dubai, UAE April 2nd
Almaty, Kazakhstan April 5th
Baku, Azerbaijan April 7th

Wassan

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Michigan State University – Dubai Shuts Down Campus

Wassan — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:41:27 +0000

The news coming out of Dubai this morning is that Michigan State University is closing down their campus effective immediately. While the MSU campus was struggling financially, they were pushing forward with a heavy recruiting schedule throughout the Middle East & many other countries. However, finding students who met admissions standards and who were interested in staying on the Dubai campus was difficult.

So far, the only article I’ve seen has been in the UAE-based “The National” – which strangely included this quote:

Prof Kim Wilcox, the provost and vice-president of MSU, said that in the current climate many students and parents were not keen on the idea of studying in the US.

Apparently Professor Wilcox has either been misquoted or has not followed MSU’s kick-ass international recruiting team & their fantastic success in bringing students on to the East Lansing campus from all over the world.

You can read more about this in the National

[Update] There is a short update about this on Inside Higher Ed

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Campus Disorientation at American University of Cairo

Wassan — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:06:46 +0000

At a recent international higher-ed mini-conference I attended a session discussing the influx of students from Saudi Arabia and how its changed the landscape of the campus and the type of issues its presented. One of the main issues, it seemed to me, was the adjustment to the style of learning was really difficult for the students. The concept of US-style of learning is so at odds with the methods these students have used all their lives, memorize, regurgitate, do not question the professor. Suddenly they’re required to think cognitively, debate their classmates, question the professor, and analyze before answering.

Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

Its a tough chasm to bridge, and it really takes a significant amount of “deprogramming”. I’m of the thought that if you have an Intensive English Lanaguage program on campus, one of the most crucial topics to cover is study skills & learning methods. That’s why this New York Times article about the American University of Cairo caught my eye: A Campus Where Unlearning Is First

These are the kinds of questions posed to undergraduate students entering this [American University of Cairo] 90-year-old university during what the president, David D. Arnold, called a first year of “disorientation.” During disorientation, the students — 85 percent of them Egyptians — are taught to learn in ways quite at odds with the traditional method of teaching in this country, where instructors lecture, students memorize and tests are exercises in regurgitation.

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College, Inc

Wassan — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:23:37 +0000

You may have been busy last night when the PBS Frontline documentary – College, Inc – aired. You can watch the entire 1-hour show online (in the United States) and watch additional extended versions of some of the interviews.

Personally, we were shocked to learn that while the For-profit market has 10% of the student population in the US, it is taking up 25% of FAFSA dollars. It remains frustrating to see students leaving an overpriced program with more debt than they will ever be able to pay back.

This interactive map by the Chronicle of Higher Education shows the increases in enrollment from 1998 -2008 – which are nothing short of amazing feats of sales and marketing.

While you can watch the documentary as its intended – with disdain for the for-profit universities highlighted in it, I suggest also thinking about the marketing tactics used by these universities. Look at what they’re doing. Online, offline, on the subway, in the magazines, and most of all – in their personal calls. Sure, they’re basically doing what amounts to a high pressure sales tactic used in time-share seminars all over Florida, but that personal connection…maybe that’s what you should think about.

So basically what I’m saying is, take what they’re doing, dial it down a few notches, and use it for good. Diversity. Outreach. Engagement. Make it more than just buzzwords on an ad campaign.

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US Educational Group Middle East Tour Fall 2010

Joseph — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:37:52 +0000

US Educational Group announces the Middle East Fall 2010 Tour, you can find more details & register on the USEG Tours website

You might be a little surprised to see that we’re heading to Iraq at the end of the tour – don’t be – the fair in Iraq last January was very successful. More than 17 universities from the US & UK attended the mini-fair in Baghdad and Irbil, and reported intense interest from the students they saw in both cities. With the Iraq Education Initiative pilot program in full swing this is the perfect time for your university to show its commitment to the program and the students it will be sending!

Beirut, Lebanon - October 11th
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - October 13th
Kuwait City, Kuwait - October 16th
Manama, Bahrain - October 18th
Doha, Qatar - October 20th
Dubai, UAE – October 23rd
Amman, Jordan - October 25th
Baghdad, Iraq (Free*) - October 28th
Erbil, Iraq (Free*) - October 30th

There is a visa requirement for US Citizens to Saudi Arabia, Qatar (this is new!) and Iraq. So we REALLY encourage you to make the decisions on your fall travel as early as possible this year!

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