The purpose of recruiting is to increase the quality, quantity or diversity in your enrollment mix. Recruiting is best done by faculty, alumni, and current graduate students, because they can provide information about the curriculum, work experience, career choices and answer the detailed questions that prospects have.

The first phase of recruiting typically starts at UCF in early September with the Graduate Fair and the Career Fair for graduate students. We recommend that the graduate program provide an open house for undergraduate students who may be interested in graduate school early in the fall. Ensure that the information on your website is up-to-date and that you provide links to the Graduate Catalog and the Graduate Application for Admission. We also recommend that you have faculty call colleagues at peer institutions to inquire about potential applicants and then prepare direct e-mails to send to these prospects.

The second phase of recruiting begins when you have finally offered admission to students in February. It is the program director’s responsibility to organize specific faculty and graduate students to call candidates and answer any questions that they may have. The College of Graduate Studies will follow up with an e-mail to all admitted students with information and request an acceptance or rejection of the offer. Please remember that often students will accept the first offer that they receive (particularly international students) and certainly the best offer they receive.

Best Practices in Recruiting

• Determine where your students come from and the best way to reach that particular audience.
  
  
• If a program attracts part-time students from the local region, determine how to let those potential applicants know about your program.
• If your program attracts full-time out of state students, determine what states, institutions and professions they belong to.
• Please update your contact information with the College of Graduate Studies when the program director or staff support changes by e-mailing Carreen Krapf at ckrapf@mail.ucf.edu.
• Incorporate the Request Info on Graduate Programs button into your college, department and program websites. This button links students to the College of Graduate Studies Request Information online form, where prospects can enter their information and receive automated general and program information e-mails from the College of Graduate Studies.
• Enter information that you have obtained about prospects from various meetings, phone calls, graduate fairs, and other activities into the Request Info on Graduate Programs so that these prospects will be entered into the database, appear on your weekly prospect report and receive e-mail communications from the College of Graduate Studies. People that take the time to attend an event are already highly interested in your program and the best way to move them to an applicant is by following up immediately with worthwhile information that they need to know.
• The Prospect Inquiry Form may be downloaded from the GradInfo site from the Recruiting Forms section. (see GradInfo Userguide)
• Pull your prospect reports weekly from GradInfo to see who is interested in your program and follow up with them to facilitate the application and enrollment processes.
• Conduct a focus group of your current students to find out what they like about the program. Use this information to recruit prospective students and ask your current students to help by sharing their experiences with prospects. Interested in conducting a focus group? Contact Barbara Rodriguez at barbara@mail.ucf.edu.
• Please make admissions decisions within a couple of days of receiving the application. Thanks to technology, prospects expect instant responses from their electronic applications, and the quicker they receive a response, the more likely they are to enroll. Students should receive an admissions decision within two weeks of the application being processed. International students will accept their first admissions offer.

Communications and Advertising

• Website: information in general has to be up to date, accurate and consistent. Please check to ensure that you have a link to the Graduate Students website, the Online Application, a Request Information Inquiry Form, Student Financial Assistance and the Graduate Catalog on your website.
• Focus your efforts on online advertising, e-mail communications, and your program website, since most graduate prospects will get their information this way. Faculty communication and advertising are the most effective ways to recruit. An accurate and current website highlighting faculty expertise and financial support is crucial to advertising your program. Printed brochures are valuable only for recruiting events or related activities as a supplement to faculty expertise.
• Request State University System and UCF undergraduate lists and send communications to these prospects including information about your program, scheduled events and testimonials from alumni, students and faculty. The request forms are located in the Downloads section of GradInfo and should be submitted to Barbara Rodriguez at barbara@mail.ucf.edu.
• Implement a systematic communications plan, that would allow you to communicate important information to your prospects, applicants, admits, and current students. The communications should be personalized, with e-mails and phone calls from faculty, alumni, and current students. This is the most important part of the process for converting prospects to current students. See Sample Communications Plan.

• The College of Graduate Studies will supplement your communications thorugh a series of automated HTLM communications specific to your program. These communications are automated by the College of Graduate Studies, but should be updated and edited on a regular basis by each program. To make the process easier for you, the content can be updated through the Description smartform for your program in the Graduate Catalog Content Management system (CMS). If you have questions about making these edits or updates, please contact gradcrm@mail.ucf.edu.
• As soon as an application is received, an automatic response should be sent back to the student informing them about your program and the faculty and research strengths. It is important that websites include truth in advertising information – number of applications and percentage of those admitted and enrolled, qualifications of the average student enrolled in your program, time to degree for your students, the percentage of students who graduate with their degree, the percentage who receive financial support and the nature of the financial support (fellowships, assistantships, loans, etc.), and stories about the successes of your students and faculty. Applicants are increasingly looking for this information and failure to provide it can discourage a student from applying to your program.
• Invite applicants to an online open house to provide information and answer questions to facilitate the completing of the application process. Contact Barbara Rodriguez at barbara@mail.ucf.edu to schedule.

Recruiting Events

• Consider hosting open houses, graduate fairs, pizza parties, discussions with undergraduates, tours of your labs or facilities, etc. Create relationships with feeder schools, make presentations to other colleges' club activities (particularly those that are four-year institutions).
• Have faculty, alumni, and current students attend recruiting events, including the Graduate Fair at UCF in September, a pizza party to recruit your undergraduate students held in early fall, chat room discussions, etc. Students and applicants want to talk with faculty who are excited about their research and their discipline.
• UCF undergraduate students are our best prospect pool, schedule events specifically to recruit these students into your program.
• When attending recruiting events, you can download the Prospect Inquiry Form from the Downloads section of GradInfo and use these to gather information about prospects. Note: information must include either a birth date or Social Security Number in order to be entered into the system.
• Schedule an online open house (chats) with the College of Graduate Studies for your prospects, your applicants, your admitted students, and your newly enrolled students as a way of answering their questions and making sure they take the next step in the admissions process. Contact Barbara Rodriguez at barbara@mail.ucf.edu.
• Please provide details about your program events to Barbara Rodriguez at barbara@mail.ucf.edu for inclusion on the Graduate Students website events calendar.
• Attend the Grad Fair held every year in September, hosted by the College of Graduate Studies. Contact Barbara Rodriguez for more information at barbara@mail.ucf.edu.Students are provided with information about the Graduate Fair at www.graduate.ucf.edu/GradFair

Recruiting Resources Available

• The College of Graduate Studies provides training to new program directors and staff as needed on the different aspects of recruiting. Access to GradInfo and other systems will not be issued until this training has been completed. To schedule a training session, please contact Heather Murphy at hcmurphy@mail.ucf.edu.

• Use the GradInfo website to track inquiries, find data about your program, download forms and files, and download weekly inquiry, prospect and admissions reports. If you don’t have access to GradInfo, please contact Heather Murphy at hcmurphy@mail.ucf.edu.
• Request a UCF and SUS undergraduate lists and communicate with these prospects. Request forms are located in the downloads section of GradInfo.
• Request a list from the GRE service center and communicate with these prospects. Request forms are located in the downloads section of GradInfo.

Timeline of Activities

Schedule	Task	Information Resource
Weekly or Monthly	Pull prospect report from GradInfo and communicate with prospects	www.gradinfo.ucf.edu > recruiting > prospect report
Weekly	Make admissions decisions of applications received that week
Daily	Enter prospects within 24 hours after initial contact	www.students.graduate.ucf.edu/inquiry/ or PeopleSoft
Weekly or Monthly	Check the Events Calendar on the Faculy and Staff website for our scheduled events	www.admin.graduate.ucf.edu > Events Calendar

Annual Recruiting Plan

Month	Activity
January	Make admissions decisions, communicate with people with incomplete applications and follow up quickly with new inquiries.
February	Complete admissions decisions for fall semester. For non-doctoral and non-fellowship admits, continue to follow up on incomplete applications and new inquiries.
March	Survey your current students to determine strengths and weaknesses of the program. Use this information in your recruiting plan.
April	Contact local organizations and companies to schedule workshops and presentations for the spring semester to promote your program.
May	Work with undergraduate organizations and service departments on campus to schedule workshops and presentations for the spring semester to promote your program. Request UCF undergraduate student lists and invite them to your scheduled presentations.
June	Spend time reviewing your website, update program information and contact information to keep current and consistent. Update content for CRM communications.
July	Research recruiting fairs at other institutions and industry organizations and plan your recruiting schedule for the fall semester.
August	Contact your relationships at potential feeder institutions, companies and organizations to schedule workshops and presentations for the fall. Request SUS student lists and communicate your recruiting plans.
September	Attend the Grad Fair! Host a table and bring faculty, students and alumni to talk with prospects. Also, schedule follow up communications with prospects who visited your table.
October	Attend recruiting fairs at key feeder institutions. Also, host online chat/open house sessions for your prospects to answer questions about your program and the application process.
November	Communicate with prospective students you have recruited this fall to facilitate the application process before the priority deadline — January 15.
December	Take advantage of this time to organize your plans for the spring semester.

Request Information Button

The UCF College of Graduate Studies has designed a Request Info on Graduate Programs button for use on college, department and program websites. Using this Request Info button university-wide will help the university capture the total prospect pool for graduate education at UCF, better identify hot prospects, and target recruiting efforts successfully.

The Request Info button links students to the College of Graduate Studies Request Information online form, which students can use to request graduate information and identify themselves as an inquiry. If students use this Request Info button and complete the Request Information online form, colleges and departments do not have to do data entry in PeopleSoft for these inquiries. These inquiries will flow into PeopleSoft without additional data entry.

Students who complete the Request Information online form are listed on the Inquiry Report available in GradInfo and will be entered programmatically into PeopleSoft for prospect tracking.

Questions about the use of the Request Info button may be sent to Brian Graham at bwgraham@mail.ucf.edu.

Adding the Request Info Button to Your College, Department, or Program Website

Please place the Request Info button in a prominent position in the graduate area of your website. Placing it in the navigation area that can be seen from all webpages is preferred, rather than placing it on a single webpage within the body of the webpage, where it may be seen only on that webpage.

Copy and paste the code in the text box below to the webpage on your site where you want the button to be displayed.