1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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!”

5. 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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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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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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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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160 pounds of mail from colleges and universities during this student’s search. Wow. While there is certainly a discussion and post in there about the OVERabundance of information thrown at high schools students in the US, what *I* thought about was how many Universities were sending viewbooks overseas? How much are you spending on mailing tons of paper across the world? Often to countries where the mail system is so poor the chances of the student receiving it in a timely manner is completely out of the question (yeah Saudi Arabia, I’m talking to you).

So are you still doing this? Are you still spending money on random direct mail campaigns? Does it work? What is your ROI? I am curious because I would think on average a University should be sending a hundred or less viewbooks to a country like Saudi Arabia each year. The rest of your budget should be spent on using the hundreds of better and more effective methods of connecting with the student on a personal and emotional level. That’s what will connect most of them to your institution and make them interested in attending.

…of course I say all this as an international student who chose her school based on its brochure and chose NOT to go to another based on theirs. Of course that was more than 10 years ago…the recruitment game has changed, and its time to give the students virtual hugs and handshakes, not just more mail.

Wassan

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Visit the Al Jamiat Magazine site to read about the student view of Otterbein College.

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States spend money on attracting tourists by advertising in magazines, billboards, and TV – its time for colleges and universities to grab on to this style of marketing and pull students in to the state. At the Washington International Education Council (WIEC) conference in Washington DC this past January, a representative from the US Commerce Service discussed the importance of international education consortia.  They gave examples of states who have already put this idea into practice including Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Oregon.

In budget crunch-time pooling together resources is not just smart, its necessary. By collecting advertising dollars from private high schools to small niche colleges all the way to specific graduate programs, everyone can benefit from a high impact ad campaign aimed at international students.  Many countries, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK are competing aggressively by the use of consortia to attend more trade shows, advertise in more magazines and attempt to attract more of the foreign students.

We encourage you to call your US Commerce service representative to discuss the support they can give you, or contact us for assistance on your project!

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