If you're coming here for the first time and don't know yet who we are and what we do. Let me be the first to welcome you.
We are Finoo, a startup born in the U.S. by two founders, one from the international education industry and another from the Tech World. Together we are building a platform to help your future international students afford their education abroad. (More about it on our website)
For now on, we'll be sharing lots of interesting information to help you make your university, college or school more attractive and convenient to international students.
Okay, now that the introduction is over...Let's dive into what we created for you. Enjoy the read!
The competition among educational institutions is fierce. You're not only competing against other institutions in your city or country but with universities from a bunch of other countries thousands of miles away.
So the question is: What makes international students nowadays decide where they want to study?
Quality of Education? Rankings? Cost of studies? Location?
Well, we all know these things play an important part BUT as a recruiter you can't really change or improve those things in your institution, can you?
But at the same time, your department has higher and higher targets for you to reach.
So what can you do to attract more international students???
Two key words are the secret answer for that question: Availability & Convenience
That's right! Think about it. The students that are now going to university were born in the 2000s. And boy oh boy… aren't they unique?!
This so-called "Gen Z" is already very different from its previous generation, the "Millennials". Instead of pointing out all their differences, let's focus on one important thing:
This generation is used to "user-friendly, easy to access, simple and fast."
In other words, they will not go through complicated, long and painful processes to consume your product. Now let's bring it back to the reality of your institution:
1- How "available" and easy to be found online is your university?
This is where everything starts. The very moment a student in Brazil Google anything related to study abroad destinations, your university needs to be THERE!
2- How fast can you reply?
These students are not going to read long texts to learn about your university (this post I'm writing now for example, NOT A CHANCE, too long). They want to chat with you, ask all kinds of questions and they expect you to reply right away.
3- How user-friendly is your application process?
Applying to your university must be super intuitive and straightforward. This is another barrier you need to remove in order to recruit them.
Last but not least, the payment process. This is by far the biggest "pain" international students face when going to study abroad.
Exchanging their money and sending it abroad to your university is a nightmare. The lack of support and high fees charged by banks and companies in this process directly impact the very start of their experience with your university. (We are going to write another post about it pretty soon).
The pressure for higher targets to reach, the not always "great" budget available and the insane competition with other universities make your job as an international student recruiter extremely difficult and hard!
But the good news is that there are solutions out there you can use. From our side here at Finoo, we'll keep developing contents to help you face these challenges!
So stay tuned and don't forget to share your feedback and suggestions for new posts!!
Cheers!
The Finoo Team.
Cross-border tuition payments made easy.