Why applicant to applicant conversations should be a central part of every university’s student recruitment strategy

Community and belonging are the most critical factors in ensuring that your cohorts of incoming 2023 applicants go on to become happy and engaged newly enrolled students.  A lack of focus and resource allocation in developing a strong vibrant community results in lower conversion, effectively undermining all of the good work that has gone before.

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This sense of belonging can be fostered most effectively by guiding applicants into multiple communities with their incoming peers in the weeks and and months prior to enrolment.  

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While many HEIs do have a peer-to-peer (P2P) advocacy strategy embedded in their recruitment processes, It is often transactional in nature and does little to foster a strong bond between the incoming applicants themselves.

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At applicant stage students spend more time connecting with fellow applicants than in conversation with any current student ambassadors or staff members - welcome news for busy recruitment and admissions teams!

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Example of an UG applicant community structure - guiding thousands of applicant connections and community groups

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Incoming applicants don’t only want to talk to your ambassadors!

This cycle we have seen greater demand from applicants looking to form more intimate connections with fellow applicants centred around niche interests and shared commonality (e.g. place of origin, dog fanatics, LGBTQ+)

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And they do so because they really value the closeness of the connections formed in these spaces!  

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We asked over 5,000 applicants all starting in September who they wanted to connect with and what value they attributed to that connection.

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• 60% of applicants said that connecting with a fellow applicant was very important to them.
• 37% suggested that connecting with a current student ambassador was very important.

Before you start at university, how important are the following?

When asked what was the best thing about connecting with their peers, representative responses were:

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“Being able to connect with others on course”

“I loved being able to meet people who I’d be living with”

“It gave me the feeling that I wasn't alone during that uncertain time”

“Being able to connect to people on my course and accommodation”

“During these challenging time it has kept me connected and informed”

“Getting to connect with people before college starts”

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What does this all this mean for university recruitment and admissions teams?

   Particularly at post application stage teams need to focus on maximising applicant to    applicant connectivity.

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For undergraduate applicants in particular, there is a strong demand for access to communities of others also starting out.  Institutions, however, often trust that this community will develop organically, but leaving this to chance is a missed opportunity for recruitment teams to take control, to choose how and when they occur, and have the ability to track and measure impact.  

For universities strong community makes sound business sense!

Of the thousands of students using CampusConnect in pre-enrolment, applicants who made at least two peer connections were significantly more likely to go on to enrol than those that didn’t.  In fact, 96% of applicants who made 3 or more connections went on to enrol. This, combined with the availability of extended insight, makes for a compelling argument for cultivating a much stronger and more vibrant applicant-applicant digital community strategy.