Recruiting Intelligence

Going to AIRC in Atlanta? Let’s connect!  

Or, meet us at:
AIEA in DC in February and ASU+GSV in San Diego in April.

Kudos to NACAC leadership for never shying away from the hard issues in the face of ever-present financial challenges. Prompts feelings of mad respect for all those who put in the long, fretful hours forging the path forward. Especially now when our fairly recognizable business landscape has morphed into a very strange wilderness. 

The Intead team feels the consistent pressure to deliver actionable insights to our community. Below, we share a few significant takeaways from our NACAC presence. What we’re thinking about:

• How will chief enrollment officers deliver the enrollment numbers their institutions need?
• Where will we see universities closing next year?
• And will the new H-1B fee proposal from the White House support international student mobility to the US? (spoiler alert: Yes!) 

Read on…   

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at AIRC in Atlanta in December, AIEA in DC in February, and ASU+GSV in San Diego in April. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

eBook Reboot:  88 Ways to Recruit International Students 2025 update. Your tactical toolkit for the year ahead. Covering all the bases in 10 quick-read chapters. Fosters great ideation discussions with your team.

Our own research on the preferences and motivations of international students aligns with this. We suspect your experience does, too. Broader media reports emphasize that domestic families and students are increasingly focused on career outcomes as the justification for the cost of university. International students and families always have been. 

Where we are going with this: the more successful you are at getting students into the careers they want, the more successful you will be at getting students to fill the seats you want.  

And yes, we know you’re already telling prospective students that “95% of your graduates get a job or continue on to an advanced degree after graduation.” That’s no differentiator if everyone is saying it, despite its accuracy. 

This is where Career Services should chime in. Yet, many (read: most) students view Career Services through a lens of “why bother?” Hard to blame them. Help with resume and cover letter writing is too basic and can be provided by ChatGPT. Mock interviews have value, but there’s SO much more these departments could be doing to help students and your institution’s enrollment growth. 

Read on for some interesting data points and our recommendations for improving Career Services with an eye on driving enrollment…  

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at AIRC in Atlanta in December, AIEA in DC in February, and ASU+GSV in San Diego in April. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

eBook Reboot:  88 Ways to Recruit International Students 2025 update. Your tactical toolkit for the year ahead. Covering all the bases in 10 quick-read chapters. Fosters great ideation discussions with your team.

Of course, you have been staying informed about all the policy changes. And no, you won't provide a summary of the policy changes that are coming in weekly with your multi-faceted plan to address each one, giving appropriate weight to the student, department, and institutional priorities.

Still, you know your colleagues are coming from a good place as they express their dismay. It can be gratifying to establish that these colleagues actually know your office and your role exist! We jest (but only a little). 

Are you seeing the opportunity? 

The SIO’s job is rarely well understood. The international staff swims in different, more complex currents than the larger domestic team. Storm clouds that the domestic team can ignore look entirely different from the SIO's office.  

Just one example: A downturn in oil prices, for instance, can disrupt the finances of students from oil-dependent economies. An economic shift like this rarely impacts domestic students. Is the domestic enrollment marketing team even aware of stuff like that? Likewise, any sudden shift in international currency exchange rates can alter student retention realities overnight. 

Truth is, you’ve been addressing the new realities each time new policies or statements emerge. And you’ve even informed your internal community about your efforts. Have they been listening? 

This really is a golden moment to get leadership across campus in tune to what is going on with international enrollment, international student experience, and overall campus internationalization efforts. It is a golden opportunity to let your colleagues know what their role could and should be.  

Deep breath. Therein lies the opportunity. Read on… 

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at NAFSA Reg XI in Springfield in November, and AIRC in Atlanta in December. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

eBook Reboot:  88 Ways to Recruit International Students 2025 update. Your tactical toolkit for the year ahead. Covering all the bases in 10 quick-read chapters. Fosters great ideation discussions with your team.

So, while you’ve been navigating stalled visas, funding uncertainties, increased competition, and, we hope, maybe a bit of summer vacation this past quarter, we’ve published actionable ideas on: 

• Predicting student yield 
• Finding right-fit education agents 
• Keeping your education agent partnerships strong 
• Creating “Reel” connections, based on our work with a UK higher ed NGO 
• Staying the course in international student recruitment despite headwinds 

Plus, access to popular worksheets on: 

• Agent evaluation
• Building strategic international enrollment plan

Read on… 

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at NACAC in Columbus in September, NAFSA Reg XI in Springfield in November, and AIRC in Atlanta in December. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

eBook Reboot:  88 Ways to Recruit International Students 2025 update. Your tactical toolkit for the year ahead. Covering all the bases in 10 quick-read chapters. Fosters great ideation discussions with your team.

We recently worked with a higher ed NGO positioning the UK as a first-choice study destination for US students. The campaign was a success (more on the metrics below). Why? We delivered content that spoke directly to our audience. That, and we brought the conversation to them on the right channels. We made the academic options feel within reach.  

The thing about social media is it gives you a chance to kickstart real conversations. What’s campus life like there? What’s the social scene like? What does student support really look like? How hard are the academics, really?  

Well-scripted content doesn’t always need polish (though sometimes it helps). The point is: it should be intentional, relatable, and relevant. All that authenticity stuff. If you’re doing it right, you’re not tossing up a Reel and hoping for the best. You’re showing up in the spaces your audience already trusts, with content they actually want to watch.  

What made our recent campaign especially effective was the pull-through. As the target audience engaged with the content and wanted to learn more, we extended the conversation across platforms.  

In this case, we built connections with students on Instagram and targeted high school counselors via LinkedIn. From there, we directed each audience to tailored pages on the organization’s website, delivering the information we knew they would be looking for -- anticipating their questions.

Understanding your user journey is all about anticipating and responding to the questions they will want answered. 

The campaign we ran lasted 8 months and had a media buy budget of just $28k. Want a closer look? Read on to download our quick-hit case study and our benchmarking data… 

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at NACUBO in Phili and NACAC in Columbus in September, NAFSA Reg XI in Springfield in November and AIRC in Atlanta in December. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

From everything we’ve seen, heard, and researched, students still want what they’ve always wanted: a good education, a career on the other side of graduation, meaningful friendships, and some international adventure.

These aspirations persist – despite anti-immigration rhetoric, despite visa complications, despite global uncertainty. Student goals have persisted through 9/11, the 2009 global financial crisis, Brexit, and skyrocketing US tuition. They’ve persisted within Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and are showing up in Gen Alpha. 

So yes, some things change (see below). But the fundamentals of what pursuit of education is all about, not so much.

Below we offer a useful one-pager breaking down the steps to building a strategic international enrollment plan. Your colleagues have scooped these up from us during our conference presentations and downloaded them from our website. Helpful perspective as you consider your options and your processes in place (and those desired).

Read on… 

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at NACUBO in Phili and NACAC in Columbus in September, NAFSA Reg XI in Springfield in November and AIRC in Atlanta in December. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Sustaining a successful partnership with your agents requires mutual investment, clear and frequent communication, and trust. The most effective agents act as a true extension of your enrollment team. That level of service, however, requires an institutional partner who remains responsive and provides ongoing support all along the way. 

Seems obvious. And yet, too many institutions sign the agent contract, hit autopilot, and expect results to roll in. If it were that easy, you wouldn’t need an agent strategy. But you do. 

• Metrics to evaluate education agent performance
  
• Streamlined internal processes that make your institution easy to represent
  

An often overlooked and critical element: Who on your university team have you assigned to managing your agent partners? If it is the new, eager staffer in your office with no real international experience (because, how hard can it be?), you are in for lackluster results or worse.  

Today we outline how to get this right. Read on… 

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at NACAC in Columbus in September and AIRC in Atlanta in December. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

This year most of the Indian students Deepika talks to are being patient. “They are checking in with me to determine if now is the right time to apply, or if they should wait.” Similar to the travel disruptions the world experienced during the Covid pandemic, many of the obstacles families encounter won’t change student intention, just the timing. 

We’ve been seeing this measured reaction, particularly at the graduate-level.  

Many undergraduate students who are uncertain about their immediate plans have enrolled in Indian universities or institutions for the time being, according to Deepika. They’re keeping their options open and are considering transferring to the US once conditions improve. Some are also exploring pathway programs through their current institutions as a bridge to US education. 

There is palpable hope among students we’ve spoken with anyway. The political climate is hazy, and the immigration rules have become chaotic and more restrictive; nobody denies that. But the hope is that this, too, shall pass. So, students continue to stay informed and often turn to their education agents to verify what they’re hearing. 

Below we share a valuable agent evaluation tool for your use.

Read on… 

UCLA is not unique in this way.  

Meet Intead!  

• Find us at NACUBO in DC in July, and NACAC in Columbus in September. Be in touch to share a cup of coffee in person.

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Applications have skyrocketed for most institutions. For top-tier universities, this surge makes them even more selective (or rejective) — great for prestige and ranking supposedly, tough for admissions teams and applicants alike. For the majority of institutions, however, the steep rise in applications is just that, a steep rise in applications. Yield is on a different trajectory, and it’s driven by a simple concept: Algebra.  

The rise in applications has dramatically outpaced the increase in college-bound students, and of course, a student can only enroll in one institution, whether they are admitted to two or twenty. This then leads to a big increase in the volume of ibuprofen intake by admissions teams, as predicting the behavior of students is getting harder all the time. While institution leaders continue to demand enrollment results.

Thank goodness for the consistent ibuprofen supply.

We can point to the Common App as the bane of the admissions process. But that’s not really fair. Its advent brought more students into the system, increasing access overall. So, there’s the good. And not every university seeing the surge uses the Common App, and the University of California system is among those that do not.  

The real drivers of the application tsunami: access, competition, and coaching from influencers like school counselors and advisors. There are pros and cons to this situation. Ironically, the unpredictable nature of admissions decisions causes stress, which causes students to hedge their bets and apply to more colleges, which makes the admissions process less predictable. 

For context: 

• In 2000, the typical applicant applied to three to five institutions.  
• Today, the average student applies to eight to 12+, simply because they can.  
• In 1998, when Common App went digital, ~250,000 applications were submitted through it.  
• In 2024, that number hit 7.3 million – a 2,820% increase. (Yes, they have many more institutions as clients today, but still!)