Specific Recruiting Strategies
Faculty-to-faculty: Potential graduate students hear about graduate programs at ISU from a faculty member they work with as an undergraduate.
- Ask faculty that you collaborate with at other universities if they have potential graduate students.
- Develop relationships with faculty in your discipline in regional colleges/universities.
- Keep in contact with faculty who have written recommendation letters for previous enrolled students.
Faculty-to-student: Many of the strongest students start exploring graduate programs in sophomore or junior years
- Follow-up with prospects who contact you as soon as possible, and follow-up again close to the application deadline.
- Contact the Graduate College () to get a license for ISU’s CRM tool that makes this easier.
- Travel to regional universities and colleges and meet students. Many of our underrepresented graduate students graduated from other Iowa and regional institutions.
Website: Potential students will always explore your website looking for the following information.
- Stories of graduate students presenting research at conferences, faculty winning awards, press-releases on research, national rankings, etc.
- Prospective students don’t always know about the collegial aspect of graduate work. Your site could include information about peer mentoring for first year students, graduate student organizations, research groups and how students collaborate on projects, multiple faculty who serve student advisory/program committees.
- Many students don’t know the financial side of graduate school. Your site could include the fraction of students who receive assistantships and what that means in practice, e.g. stipend, benefits, tuition scholarship, and the career outcomes of students.
- Easy to find application requirements, assistantship information, and primary person of contact. Consider adding a link to the enquiry form, and prominently place the application page.
- Add links to your research pages with prospective graduate student pages so that prospective students can always find application information.