Jennifer Mathews, Director of International Admissions
Why is the international schools market important to the university?
Syracuse University is a private research university, located in upstate New York. We have a total of 20,000 students. 15,000 are undergraduate bachelor–seeking students, and overall 20% are international, including about 2,000 international undergraduates so we have a very global community. We are in the top 50 institutions in the United States hosting international students in terms of the number.
The international schools market is an important part of our recruitment because it drives a large percentage of our population. When we are looking for students who have the academic background necessary to be successful, and the resources to be able to afford to come to a place like SU, the international schools market is a really critical part of our recruitment strategy. In addition, many international schools around the world have either a fully English medium of instruction, or are bilingual and still do part of their curriculum in English, which is great preparation to be successful at a US institution.
In what ways does ISC Research support you?
There are several reasons why we like working with ISC Research and the ISC Outreach portal. We love that ISC Outreach gives us access to a lot of information that helps us do recruitment planning; providing us with information about school fee structures, ages of students, the curriculums that schools offer, and on top of that, access to the contacts we need in order to get into that school. All this information helps us to form a well-researched recruitment plan.
I am always impressed by the responsiveness of the ISC Research team. They reach out to us as a client on a regular basis to make sure we are aware of new reports that are published and aware of any updates to the platform. They are always willing to do training with my team if we need it.
We use a lot of the support services from ISC Research too, such as the webinars and reports. These are important tools for us; informing of changes to student mobility trends and what is happening within international schools. Having access to such information is really critical for us to move forward; they help us understand what shifts are taking place, where there may be opportunities that weren’t there before, and vice versa. We pride ourselves in having a very data-driven recruitment plan and this is all part of that.
What is it about ISC Research that you most value?
It’s a combination of the people, the data and the intelligence. The database is very thorough and very helpful to us for planning. In addition, access to contact information in the database itself is super helpful for us because we can target communications, not only to college counsellors or career counsellors, but also to department Heads. This means that we can promote some of our performing arts or STEM or tech majors. This is exciting for us; being able to say to a Head of Department that we have a really strong design programme and we can offer special sessions for students from one of our faculty members, such as a talk on professional pathways for certain options within a particular department. It creates valuable opportunities for the school, its students and for SU.
