Universities in Wales, Australia and New Zealand, plus Sweden are world leaders in responding to inquiries from prospective international students

WAS universities “lead the world for student equity experience,” according to results from a survey where people posing as prospective international students contacted 107 HE institutions in ANZ, Europe, North America and the UK.

The survey is from marketing consultants Edified and UniQuest.

Overall, one in five enquiries was unanswered and only half of responses answered all questions.

However ANZ institutions and Wales were top for responses that encouraged prospective students to keep inquiring. Australian Technology Network universities in particular, rated nine out of ten for responses. New Zealand universities scored nine for persuasiveness and comms quality. Massey U was world number one for email response.

Key findings include:

* While WAS leads the world for overall enquiry experience, in contrast, “on average North American institutions lag behind”

* a third of inquirers would not continue on the basis of first contact

* 20 per cent received no response to an inquiry but 25 per cent did get a follow-up

* almost all emails were answered

All 107 participating institutions received six calls from people presenting as prospective UG and PG coursework students from Brazil, China, France, India and Malaysia.