What do students look for in a prospective university?

How students choose a university

Universities across the UK pump millions into research, campus investment, advertising and other initiatives to attract the attention of prospective students and boost their rankings – but is this investment well-placed? And are the marketing messages included within advertising materials resonating with students?

If your student recruitment numbers are lagging behind projections, then this mismatch between your ranking priorities and what’s actually important to students might be why.

According to research by the Intelligence Unit, if students were making their own university rankings, employability would be at the top. The quality of teaching would be the second most important factor, followed by student experience and research. Perhaps surprisingly, cost came last.

Source: Intelligence Unit

 

This prioritisation of employability as the no.1 factor when choosing a university also resonated with why students consider an internationally-recognised university:

However, although the above reflects how students would rank universities, it doesn’t necessarily reflect how individual students choose universities.

There is much more published information out there on how international students choose their university. The below figure shows how these priorities drastically change between prospective students from different continents:

Source: QS World Grad School Tour Applicant Survey

 

Rather than treat your prospective international students the same and thrusting the same marketing messages under their noses, it’s important to tailor the messaging to ensure you are highlighting the aspects of your institution that will resonate most and set it apart from others the student may be considering.

Domestically, Which? surveyed prospective students and found that the most important topics they want to know about are course content (77%), academic reputation (57%), distance from home (57%) and quality of academic facilities (57%).

At the other end of the spectrum the least-researched elements of university life were found to be flexible learning options (5%), pastoral support (6%) and the reputation of the student union (11%).

When asked whether they could easily find the information they were looking for to inform their decision-making, 58% of students said they could (but this means an alarming 42% could not!). Of those who could not, the areas where they needed more information were employment prospects (35%), extra-curricular activities (32%), course structure (30%) and accommodation (27%).

When you read through this data, some common themes start appearing:

  • Employment / career prospects
  • Subject / course reputation
  • Overall university reputation
  • Distance from home / location (although for the most part this only applied to domestic students, it is a criterion that could rule your university out, especially if your audience need educating as to your whereabouts).

Many universities might think that their location is known to prospective applicants (the clue is often in the name after all!), but what’s common knowledge to your institution and its marketing team, might not be to your applicants, as these Google search terms show:

 

At AlphaGraphics, we specialise in helping higher education institutions deliver data-driven, automated marketing campaigns to improve student recruitment. To find out more, visit: https://education.alphagraphics.co.uk/about-us/

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