US Educational Group » international student recruiting

Wash Post: Enrollment of Muslim students is growing at Catholic colleges in U.S.

Wassan — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:45:29 +0000

Every conference I attend, whether NAFSA, OACAC or NACAC, the question of whether Catholic Colleges and Universities should bother recruiting in the Middle East comes up consistently. I am always baffled by the question, as I would expect Catholic institutions would be more aware of the long history of Catholic and Jesuit education in the Middle East. I have also heard counselors discouraging Catholic schools from recruiting in the region and all I can say is that they are wrong.

I was thrilled to see this article in today’s Washington Post and hope you will enjoy reading it as well:

Enrollment of Muslim students is growing at Catholic colleges in U.S.: Washington Post

Catholic Universities who have traveled with us to the region, including DePaul University, Loyola Marymount University, Ohio Wesleyan University, have always seen a great deal of success in recruiting students from the area. The students are attracted to the universities for their education, campus life, diversity, and majors – just like at any other school. A few times I have been asked whether they will be required to pray at Church, which of course is not the case at these universities. This is a simple misconception that a few of the students may have, but the overwhelming number do not connect the university with religion.

I do still discourage universities with a more overt religious mission from recruiting in the area, having required Chapel or Bible study classes will not be encouraging to potential students in the region and I would doubt the universities would see a good return on their travel budget.

Now I have to go dig up that old photo of the Jesuit priest (Father) from Massachusetts playing baseball at Baghdad College in the late 1950′s to share with you all. Its why my dad still cheers for the Boston Red Sox, to the chagrin of my Cardinals loving husband!

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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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OACAC BOS10 Conference App

Wassan — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:35:37 +0000

Finally arrived in Boston for the OACAC BOS10 – Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling Conference. Traffic delays brought me into the city well past midnight, and onto the Northeastern campus at almost 1.30am. I remembered that the last email from the OACAC team had mentioned an iPhone App, since I didn’t have my agenda on me, I quickly downloaded it in the hopes it would actually be, you know, helpful.

Wow, thanks so much to the web development team at Northeaststern for putting the tjme into developing the rockin’ OACAC BOS10 conference app for the iPhone. A simple to use interface allows even the frazzled traveler to stay organized. The interface and nice and simple:

Screenshot - OACAC BOS10 App

The *only* item I would have added would have been a campus map – or maybe that was only needed while searching for the housing dorm at 1.30am after arriving on a much delayed flight.

NAFSA better not have ANY excuses for not having an app available for next year’s conference!

The agenda is easy to access, each session is listed on there, and all the pretty social media icons are easy to access (facebook, twitter, flickr). Be sure to properly tag the conference if you will be tweeting with the #BOS10 hashtag (however, I think lots of people will just use the #OACAC10 hashtag as well).

Screenshot - Sessions

The *only* item I would have added would have been a campus map – or maybe that was only needed while searching for the housing dorm at 1.30am after arriving on that much delayed flight.

NAFSA better not have ANY excuses for not having an app available for next year’s conference!

If you didn’t already download it, what are you waiting for?! See you all in a few hours!

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N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi – in the Search for Top Students

Wassan — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:50:05 +0000

The PR office at NYU Abu Dhabi must have been working overtime this weekend, articles in both the New York Times & Inside Higher Ed this morning talk about the mix of students making up the inaugural class. US Educational Group is proud to have been part of the recruitment effort!

N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi Scours Globe for Top Students

The Worlds Honor College?

NYU Abu Dhabi recruiting with US Educational Group

NYU Abu Dhabi - working on those High School students!

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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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US Educational Group Fall 2009 Fair

Joseph — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:51:06 +0000

We have been in Washington DC all work finalizing visas and working on our student brochure for the Fall 2009 student recruitment tour in the Middle East. We will be heading out to the first fair stop, Beirut, Lebanon in October and we want to welcome all the Universities, Colleges and Language Centers who will be joining us on this excellent tour!

American University in Cairo
Arizona State University
California State University, Fullerton
College of the Desert
DePaul University
Diablo Valley College
Emporia State University
Florida Institute of Technology
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
Lasell College
Marquette University
Mercer University
Michigan State University Dubai
New York University Abu Dhabi
Oklahoma City University
Pace University
Parsons the New School for Design
Purdue University
Roger Williams University
San Jose State University
Savannah College of Art and Design
Stony Brook University
University of Arizona
University at Buffalo
University of Bridgeport
University of California, Riverside Extension
University of California, San Diego
University of Central Florida
University of Colorado Denver
University of Evansville
University of Hartford
University of Iowa
University of New Haven
University of Oregon
University of Toledo
Veritas Prep, GMAT Test Preparation
Virginia Commonwealth University
West Virginia University
Youngstown State University

We do have our March 2010 Middle East and Eurasia fair dates up on our site already and encourage you to sign up soon to reserve your space for next year!

March 2010 Middle East student recruitment fair dates

March 2010 Eurasia student recruitment fair dates

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160 lbs of MAIL?

Joseph — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:20:36 +0000

This video makes me shake my head this morning:

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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Yay USEG Has a Facebook URL

Wassan — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:23:06 +0000

Finally! We’ve secured our facebook URL, took a little longer than it should have… but that was our fault for not pushing it a little more in our marketing efforts. We’ve concentrated on getting the Al Jamiat facebook fan page going, and we’re happy to be reaching almost 500 fans within just 5 weeks of having it up.

Are we friends yet?

http://www.facebook.com/usegtours

http://www.facebook.com/aljamiat

I hope you’re keeping tabs on the fun stuff going on at Al Jamiat, our student traffic continues to grow as our content increases. Let me know if you have any articles or students who would be interested in sending something in!

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Iraq Education Initiative Scholarship – Canceled?

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:35:43 +0000

We saw a comment on our Al Jamiat site regarding the Iraq Education Initiative asking if the scholarship had been “canceled” due to the current economic climate…

Our initial instinct was to quickly respond with a resounding NO! That’s completely incorrect! However, in the interest of backing up our response, we sent an email to the Director of the program, to which he responded:

“This is absolutely not true. We are moving forward and the announcement to the students to submit their application is scheduled for July 15.”

So there you go folks, its time to start seriously thinking about how you’re going to recruit these Iraqi students. We suspect the in-country recruitment fairs are going to be few and far between at first. Online recruiting will be the best way to reach these “unreachables” .

A Facebook Fan page may sound overly simple, but its a great place to start – along with a localized page in Arabic aimed specifically at the Iraqi students. A very minor marketing investment that can reward your campus with incredible new students that will truly diversify the school.

Hope you’re already a fan of our Facebook page, if not – what are you waiting for?!

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Attracting International Students to your State

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:01:10 +0000

An excellent article in Inside Higher Ed today highlights a topic we at USEG discuss with our clients often: the use of a consortia to attract international students to a State they may not already know about. Read the full article here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/22/consortia

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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