Strategy

• Understand the graduate recruitment process and stages
• Assess your program enrollment trends and set achievable recruitment goals
• Identify gaps in your recruitment strategies and opportunities for growth
• Enhance your visibility through website/social media marketing and highlight your strengths
• Focus outreach to your target audiences
• Communicate with your audience consistently and effectively
• Respond quickly and follow-up through all recruitment stages
• Engage your students, faculty, alumni in sharing their stories
• Continue engagement beyond the admission stage through enrollment
• Project a welcoming and supportive environment

Developing a successful graduate recruitment strategy begins with a thoughtful analysis of where you are and where you want to be.  Engaging in this process ultimately allows you to set reasonable, achievable goals. Things to do and questions to consider:

Information may be accessed in GradSlate for current data and the Office of Institutional Research (OIR) for historical data.*

• Look at the numbers of inquiries, applicants, admitted, enrolled:
  • How many recruits contact you for information prior to applying?
  • What’s the size of your recruitment pool? Can you expand it?
  • Conversion rates and yields: How well do you convert inquiries to applicants? Admitted applicants to accepted students?
• Identify gaps/opportunities:
  •  Are you missing potential recruits because they can’t find you?  Is this an opportunity to review/revamp your website?
  • Do you have a high number of incomplete applications? Can you improve your communication/outreach plan?

*Note: SSO login may be required

• What is your capacity for graduate student growth over the next few years? What can your current faculty, curriculum, available funding/budget, etc., handle?
• Are there plans to grow faculty numbers, review/update curriculum?
• Identify your target populations (regional, national, professional/workforce, adult learners, international). Do you want/need to expand a particular pool of students?
• Identify the types of students you want to recruit. Are you looking for applicants from particular undergraduate majors or with prior work experience, research experience, or who have earned an MS?

• Where do your successful recruits come from? Domestic or international? Are they more likely to come from particular undergraduate institutions/programs? Do you have greater success with certain feeder schools/programs or colleagues from other institutions/programs? How can you build/strengthen these connections?
• Are your faculty working with preferred schools to recruit students directly? Or REU programs?
• Do you recruit locally? Are your faculty active in UGA Double Dawgs? The UGA Honors Program? UGA undergraduate organizations/associations?
• Are your assistantships competitive? Do you take advantage of institutional recruitment assistantship/fellowship awards and tuition waivers (e.g., the Presidential Graduate Fellow, Graduate School Doctoral Fellow, etc.). Visit Funding from the Graduate School for further information.
• Do you have the necessary staff support needed to do outreach, such as respond to inquiries, plan events?
• Are your courses engaging and up-to-date?
• Look at peer and aspirational/competitor institutions/programs. What are they doing to attract potential students?
• Are your top admits going elsewhere for a particular reason? You can review reasons given for declining offers of admission or not enrolling after acceptance here.