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Best Graduate School Recruitment Strategies

Discover the best graduate school recruitment strategies in 2024 and how you can implement them at your institution! Whether you are a school known for your graduate programs, or trying to attract students to innovative, new graduate programs, read on to learn how you can assess and audit your current recruitment efforts, and what you could be doing even better. From utilizing social media to offering student and alumni resources and perks, such as graduate school admissions consulting , there are many ways to appeal to prospective students.

Note: If you are a university, business, or student organization representative and want to partner with us, visit our partnerships page .

Article Contents 12 min read

Recruiting prospective students to your graduate program(s) requires a very strategic process, as graduate school application and acceptance rates can change annually, as can other factors that may impact students, such as technological advancements and shifts in trends. In recent years, graduate school application rates increased by as much as 7-10% across Canada and the United States, and admissions rates rose as a result. Generally speaking, society as a whole saw a shift in the way technology was utilized and incorporated into workplaces during the global pandemic. Because of this, many students found graduate school appealing due to the emergence of online classes and hybrid programs. Additionally, graduate programs—whether students intend to pursue further. According to a study by Statista , the number of Canadian students enrolled in a Master’s level program, or equivalent, has doubled in the past twenty years.

With that said, there are thousands of students who may be either set on attending a graduate program, or, completely new to the idea of attending graduate school. This is why it’s vital that you display your institution and program in a way that appeals to prospective students, and to do so, you must create a recruitment plan and strategize what works best for both your recruitment team, and your future students.

Graduate recruitment strategies and university partnerships are imperative to have, and your recruitment strategies should be ever-evolving for each new recruitment phase annually. Without the right materials, and the right execution plan to share information about your program to prospective students, students will be relying on whatever information they find online, what they hear from others, or, on whatever reputation your institution has. Instead of simply hoping students stumble upon your program’s website, you should strive to have several strategies in place for any prospective student, and at different levels of interest.

Graduate programs are costly, and, they are a business because they charge tuition for students to attend. If your program’s recruitment rates are low, or steadily decreasing, this means your institution isn’t generating as much revenue and could be missing out on several opportunities to earn more money, or attract prospective new students. With it being evident that students are increasingly interested in attending graduate school, it’s reasonable to assume that with the right recruitment strategies and approach to recruitment, many graduate programs could see a potential rise in admissions. 

Even if your institution is a popular one with steady enrolment rates, it doesn’t mean your recruitment strategy is at it’s best! Your institution, as well as each individual program, should have its own culture and values or intended outcome. Along with this, the reputation for your school and the graduate program’s it offers is very important to uphold. Some students may opt to attend your program for reasons based on finances or convenience, for example, and while that’s certainly not a bad thing, you should strive to ensure your graduate programs are appealing, unique, and exciting so that students decide that your programs are their top choice.

BeMo strives to help universities and colleges attract and recruit top students by offering the university student benefits program. Educational institutions can benefit by attracting and retaining top students, and students gain from having unlimited access to our expert admissions consultants and career coaches, before and during their studies. Learn more on BeMo's university partnerships page to learn how a partnership strategy can increase your school's recruitment.

How do you make your graduate school recruitment strategies work? The best strategies help your institution:

• Stand out from other programs
• Highlight the unique benefits your program offers
• Attract unique, talented students

An additional factor that could be considered an important one in your recruitment strategy is how many resources your institution offers students, and what additional measures you take to ensure you’re also paying mind to your demographics as well and acknowledging any bias or areas of potential improvement. Offering resources, and telling prospective students how they can find information about financial aid, support services, or even pathway and internship opportunities is a great way to increase interest in your school, and also promote an inclusive environment for those who might be from an underrepresented population. For example, many medical schools implement diversity initiatives in order to adhere to—and develop— t he best medical school recruitment strategies for diversity . This type of recruitment strategy is applicable to all graduate programs, as prospective students come from all walks of life.

Ensuring that you have the best graduate school recruitment strategy is key because your institution will have better opportunities to increase student enrollment and offer enticing programs for all. Ideally, you want students to be excited about applying to their chosen program and feel eager to attend your school. You don’t want to be a ‘last choice’ to anybody, and with a great recruitment strategy in place, you will be able to generate interest in your institution, even across populations of students who may not be entirely sure if graduate school is for them, who may be the first in their family to attend graduate school and/or, who may need help accessing resources to make their application process and graduate school career go smoothly.

Think of it this way: recruitment is a lot like marketing! Your recruitment strategy is your opportunity to communicate the features of your program, and explain how students will benefit from attending your program. To do this, you can include an array of content—and use different approaches when sharing it! Students will benefit from being able to visualize how your graduate program can help them achieve their dreams and accomplish their career goals. This can all be done by utilizing digital tools, working with current technology and trends, and speaking directly to the audience you want to attract.

While you may be aware of some of the best college recruitment strategies currently recommended to post-secondary institutions, it’s important to note that graduate school can be a bit unique in comparison.

The approaches taken to actively recruit and entice students may be similar across the board, however, graduate students are a slightly different target demographic than prospective undergraduate students. Here are a few things that make prospective graduate students different from prospective undergraduates:

The campus experience is still important for graduate students, however, orientation, events, networking and even online communication\u2014especially for hybrid or virtual programs\u2014may be conducted differently than similar events that are intended for first-year undergraduates "}]">

The Best Graduate School Recruitment Strategies, and How to Implement Them

Understanding and implementing the best graduate school recruitment strategies means you’ll asses your current strategies, application rates, admissions rates, retention rates, and even your graduate program(s) overall culture and reputation. Along with this, gathering insight from current students, and alumni success stories and opinions is a great way to gain an understanding of what your current recruitment strategy is doing well, and, what could change.

If you’re somebody who feels your institution’s recruitment rates could improve, a good place to start is reviewing what you’re currently doing and deciphering where you’re going wrong. Too often, businesses and schools will host out-of-date webpages, mundane recruitment information, and also have a lack of digital engagement. If you’ve identified a strategy that has worked for you in the past, it’s a great idea to stick to it, but also consider how it could improve, and what could be done in addition.

Here are some of the best graduate school recruitment strategies:

#1: Tell the story of your institution, and its programs, in a unique way

Another marketing tip: stories sell ! Statistics, along with empty promises or broad statements, such as “Our students go on to work their dream career in X field” don’t mean much to students without a narrative tied to them. If you want students to choose your graduate program(s) above all others, tell them your unique history and provide some facts about your institution!

The term ‘unique selling proposition’ arises whenever businesses are looking to market their product and show their audience why they are the best option available…this also applies to academic institutions offering graduate programs! In a saturated market, that is, one where there are several similar options for prospective students to consider, ensuring that you stand out is the first and most important thing you can do to improve your recruitment strategy.

In order to understand what makes your programs and institution unique, you also need to have confidence in each program’s history, and, where your school is headed. Identify your school culture, along with the values and potential outcomes intended for each program. Along with this, looking at alumni success stories, and even speaking to current and former students for the purpose of curating inspiring recruitment materials is a great idea. If you’re a newer campus or institution, an easy way to understand what makes your school unique is to review and compare to what your competition offers—or does not offer. It’s vital that you set your school apart, turn your competition’s weaknesses into your program/institution’s strengths, and that your school’s uniqueness is evident in your recruitment materials.

#2: Utilize social media

Social media has been prevalent for some time now, and it’s extremely important that you utilize it! Having social media accounts that are active and organized for each individual program, for your institution, and even for recruitment-specific materials, such as a ‘prospective students’ group, is a great way to encourage engagement from prospective students, and stay current. Social media evolves rapidly, and this is why it’s important to update your recruitment strategies often. In addition, your future graduate students may not be as involved with certain aspects of social media, such as TikTok, as younger, potential undergraduates are. Pay attention to trends and make note of who your target audience/demographic is. A bit of research can help you identify what platforms may be best, and what materials students are most likely to engage with! Most importantly, the message you convey must be clear and concise across all platforms, and either resonate with them, and/or encourage action. Whether the student simply saves your post, follows your account, likes your photo or completes another call-to-action, it’s imperative that you produce materials that prompt action.

You can utilize social media to not only tell your school’s story and promote its programs, but to offer value to students, such as tips or important information that also increases their awareness of your institution and programs. You can also use social media to connect with various communities and reach out to underrepresented populations of potential students. You can use social media to notify prospective students of upcoming recruitment events, host virtual recruitment events or Q&A’s, encourage them to participate or follow along, and, entertain them by sharing relevant, relatable content, such as video testimonials from alumni, or footage of fun or professional events that take place on your campus.

Finally, if you’re looking to purchase ads to advertise your graduate programs, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are effective for targeted marketing and advertising.

#3: Host the right recruitment events and prepare concise materials

Your prospective students may have cell phones and laptops by their side daily, but it’s still important to note that students often enjoy the opportunity to engage in face-to-face conversation with recruitment personnel, current students, and/or instructors.

Hosting recruitment events or open houses on your campus is a great way to generate interest in your graduate programs. Whether you’re hoping to attract undergraduates, from your institution or another, or mature students, you can get strategic about recruitment events and where you decide to set up your physical information booth. You may wish to visit colleges with undergraduate programs with students who may be interested in your graduate program. One way to decipher where your current enrollment comes from is by analyzing student data and noting what 5-10 institutions the majority of your current graduate students came from. If you’re looking to diversify your population more, you may want to reach out to schools or communities that you haven’t seen students from.

Finally, you should ensure you have eye-catching, informative handouts available to pass out to students. For graduate programs, these should be very program specific, rather than being general information about campus life. With your materials, you can also provide information about program-specific internship or employment opportunities, financial aid, and additional resources or perks you offer to your students exclusively. It’s crucial to only provide students with relevant and appealing information, and it’s also quite handy to include a prompt for students to connect with you online. QR codes, or easy-to-recall web addresses or social media information is beneficial to include on your physical handouts. Your handout may get tossed aside once the student discovers your web page or social media account, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Students who interact in-person, and receive physical materials will very likely engage with the prompt to learn more online, which only increases interest in your graduate program and your web traffic!

Even if you present your graduate programs well and have an incredible online presence, students may still be unsure if they should attend your institution or another. That is only natural, but this is where you should implement unique perks and emphasize the access to specific resources that students at your institution will have. 

For example, if your graduate program includes a renowned internship opportunity for several lucky students and plenty of 1-on-1 time with instructors, you should make these details pertinent in your recruitment materials. If you’re the only program offering access to innovative technology and your alumni are thrilled with their overall experience, share this message with prospective students in a variety of forms, such as social media, and in your recruitment materials.

As mentioned prior, many graduate students may be seeking additional resources to help ease their transition to graduate school, and even help them along with way. Mental health services, financial aid resources, such as bursaries or grants, and even social and professional networking groups on campus should be mentioned in your recruitment materials. If your campus/program doesn’t offer these types of resources currently, it’s advised determine what your students’ value, and devise a plan that could include resources that would make their lives easier. Thousands of students feel deterred to attend graduate school due to barriers, whether they’re personal, socioeconomic, or due to their own uncertainty of potential success. Use your unique qualities and storytelling ability to paint a picture for students: tell them what you offer, why it’s unique, how they’ll thrive on your campus, and what they’ll learn and achieve in your graduate program! And, should they require additional help, let them know what resources will be available to them should they decide to become a student at your school.

Additional resources and support you may choose to offer students can include alumni perks and lifelong discounts. For example, many institutions and specific programs offer their alumni discounts on insurance, hotels, air travel, and even local attractions. This may sound insignificant, but it’s certainly a perk that students may find enticing, especially if it’s one that they can enjoy throughout their lives once they graduate from your school. Another support option you could offer could be access to academic consulting services. Services like BeMo Academic Consulting can help students reach their full potential, get into their dream programs, and prepare for the admissions process for a variety of programs, including graduate school! You may wish to offer this service to current students and alumni at a discounted rate—especially if they plan to continue their education, or, if they have a dependent who could utilize the service—or, you may even opt to reach out to specific populations of prospective students and offer a discount code to allow them to access academic consulting services. This can be especially beneficial to students who are first generation applicants, who have low GPA’s, or who are overwhelmed by the admissions process.

The additional resources and services you offer can vary by program, and certainly tend to vary by institution. However, if you’re hoping to stand out and appeal to a diverse range of students in the near future, it’s important that you consider where some potential students may be struggling, and, who may be missing out on the graduate school opportunity entirely due to lack of support or resources. Further to this, understanding how to reach your intended audience, understanding their values and professional goals, and emphasizing how your graduate program(s) will help them achieve their dreams and move forward toward their careers is essential. And, you must communicate all of this in a concise manner, through the appropriate digital channels and platforms, and physical materials as well.

Student retention refers to the number of students who complete their program at your institution. Retention, or ‘retaining someone’ for the expected duration of time is favorable in workplaces, for example, as well as schools. If your institution is able to retain, say, 90% of your students for the duration of their program, that means you see very few drop outs and students are completing their courses, and eventually graduating!

Student retention is very important in higher education because for every student that drops out, your institution is losing money, and perhaps its reputation! Students will inevitably drop out, of course, as some realize that their chosen path isn’t for them. However, it’s unfortunate if students are dropping out for preventable reasons, such as feeling unwelcomed or overwhelmed by the campus experience, disliking their program instructors, feeling a lack of support, being confused about their future, grades or financial abilities, or being offered limited opportunities for engagement. Learning why students are leaving, what could have prevented their departure, and what can be done to better the student experience is all a part of building a retention strategy and understanding best practices.

Retention practices are always ongoing! Seldom do students not require support in their upper years of study. Your institution and your programs should understand how to support and engage with students at all levels of schooling. Orientation and communication with your first-year students is very important because it sets the tone and makes an impression of them as they begin their educational journey, however, students will require support and opportunities throughout their years at your institution in order to succeed, thrive, make important decisions about their career path, and stay enrolled in their program.

Yes! Retention is important for all levels of higher education. Undergraduate students, MBA students, medical students, law students, and so on.

No matter what type of focus your institution has in mind, you’ll want to ensure you’re able to retain students throughout the duration of their program in order to help them succeed and send them down a promising career path. If your students are dropping out at concerning rates, especially in their upper years or in a graduate/professional program, something isn’t right!

The best practices for student retention in higher education include: providing exciting inclusive orientation activities and utilizing social media groups/pages for students in all years, but especially first years. Ensuring that students have ample networking and mentorship opportunities, dedicated faculty, encouraging academic advising, and providing resources, support and guidance to students who are struggling with their academics, personal struggles or finances are all great ways to retain students. Along with this, using surveys or other evaluations to gauge student success, impressions and feedback is a great way to figure out what needs to be improved upon at your institution.

Start by looking at your current strategies and practices, as well as your data. Is your drop-out rate standard, or, are you losing students frequently? If so, you’ll want to hone in on what programs and years the students were in, and see if you recognize any patterns. You may want to consider student surveys and ask for student feedback, as well as feedback from faculty, as you determine what your next best steps will be, whether it’s curating a better social media and communication/networking environment for your first-year students, or improving your academic advising practices, or anything in between.

Yes. It may require some strategic analysis, planning, and work, but a low retention rate often reversible when the contributing factors are identified and corrected!

Offering academic consulting to students will appeal to them as being more than just a perk, but as a means to help guide them on their academic journey and path toward graduate or professional school. Students who become discouraged throughout their program, perhaps who have a low GPA or feel overwhelmed by the thought of accomplishing their career goals, are at risk for dropping out of their program entirely. Academic advising can help students with their current studies and barriers to an extent, however, academic consulting is more of a preparatory service that helps students approach interviews, exams, and multi-step applications with confidence.

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Look at trends.

Do you notice that you receive a large applicant pool from a specific institution or area of the country? Are certain applicants not committing to your program? Consider these findings when creating your recruitment plan . Look at national trends to see if other institutions are experiencing something similar. Resources like CGS Graduate Enrollment and Degree report and IIE Open Doors Report can help you compare.

Identify your program’s strengths

Identify at least three highlights of your program to use in recruitment. These could include rankings, research access, student funding, location, job prospects or student engagement. Use these highlights when creating recruitment material or when having conversations with prospective students.

Review your program’s website

As a prospective graduate student, how easy is it to find information on your webpage? How many clicks does it take to get there? Ask people who are not familiar with your page to try to find information. Ask current students for their input. Review your website periodically to ensure things are up to date and hyperlinks still connect.

Be responsive

Responsiveness can make or break an applicant’s commitment. Try to ensure emails, phone calls and other methods of communication are replied to quickly and thoughtfully. Consider creating a standard initial response email faculty can use when they receive general inquiries. An example can be found in Recruitment Templates and Printouts.

Identify college or program recruitment representatives

Identify current graduate students who can share and articulate the graduate student experience for your unit with prospective students through email, during campus visits or at recruitment events. Be mindful of the time commitment you are asking from the student.

Also, identify faculty and staff who are skilled and successful at recruiting. Provide resources and opportunities for them to pursue recruitment outreach. While there may be primary recruitment representatives for your unit, remember that EVERYONE can play a role in recruitment.

Visit College and Program Recruitment Representatives for more resources.

Get your name out there

External conferences are opportunities to promote your program through print ads, hosting an expo table or having OSU attendees share information while networking. Undergraduate poster sessions are a great place to interact and share information with qualified students as well. Whoever is representing your unit should be able to speak to your program’s highlights and website, and have a way to collect or share contact information. Send a follow-up email to collected contacts to keep dialog moving. Request Graduate School Material to send with representatives.

Oregon State undergraduates are a local recruitment source. Participate in different on-campus events (Meet the Majors, Career Development Center workshops, etc.) to spread awareness about your graduate programs. Advertise open lectures to undergrads, offer to speak to student clubs or organize a graduate programs info session. Social media and email communications are other ways to get your name out there.

Continue recruitment post-admission

Getting a student to apply and be admitted is just the first step. The next task is having the student commit and enroll. Continue communication with admitted/committed students. Have faculty or program directors call admitted students to congratulate them and answer any questions. Invite admitted graduate students to join a Facebook or Slack group where they can meet each other and converse before the term starts. Note that students residing in China will need a VPN to access these platforms.

Host a campus visit for admitted students to connect with your program virtually or in-person. During the visit, allow opportunities for admitted students to interact with unit faculty, staff and students and to learn more about program specifics. An example agenda can be found in Recruitment Templates and Printouts. Partner with the Graduate School to present an OSU Graduate School for Prospective Students to visiting students.

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Enrollment and Retention

Reimagining Graduate Student Recruitment: 4 Tips to Get Started

February 6, 2024 | 3 min Read

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Students pursue advanced degrees with the promise of invaluable research opportunities, specialized skills, and increased earning potential. Accordingly, many college and university graduate programs have grown significantly over the last few decades. In fact, from 2011 to 2021, the rate of growth of earned master’s and doctoral degrees outpaced bachelor’s and professional programs.

However, according to the Council of Graduate Schools , the shrinking enrollment pipeline playing out in undergraduate programs across the U.S. may be reaching the graduate education community. Contributing factors include a strong job market, challenging political landscape, and the ongoing student debt crisis. This has led even the most sought-after graduate programs at prestigious universities to reexamine their graduate student recruitment operations. In doing so, many have discovered outdated technology, inconsistent procedures, lack of transparency, and a desperate need for modernization.

Whether your graduate program is at a big university or a small college, there are four fundamental steps to reimagine your recruitment process.

1. Get together: Communicate across your college or university.

Schools typically handle graduate and undergraduate student recruitment differently. Most have centralized undergraduate recruiting with team members from admissions, recruitment, and marketing coordinating communications, technology, and processes. Very few schools have centralized graduate student recruitment activities, and each department handles its own program. When the departments are working in silos with disparate processes and technology to track students and activities, they are more likely to duplicate efforts, increase costs, and yield inaccurate student information.

Successful graduate student recruitment programs require centralized effort and communication throughout admissions, recruitment, marketing, and the departments involved. Best practice is to use the same enrollment management software across departments with role-based access so there is one consistent record for each prospective student.

2. Get on the same page: Develop recruitment practices useful for all programs.

Faculty and staff should recruit using individual flair to differentiate their programs from the competition. Yet it is critical to create a cohesive recruitment experience for all graduate programs at your institution. If a student changes their area of interest, they shouldn’t encounter a lapse in communication or get confused by a new recruitment process.

Creating some standards for all student recruitment—certain milestones in the process—creates a consistent experience while allowing programs to shine where they are unique. Think of this as picking the same textbook. Each instructor can emphasize different chapters and make the class their own, but everyone is learning from the same book.

3. Get rid of barriers: Review your application process.

Many highly competitive graduate programs are now looking to expand their applicant pool to reach enrollment goals and maintain their competitive status. To do so, they must look deeply at their recruitment and application processes to look for any unnecessary barriers. Do you truly need all those form fields to make a strong admissions decision, or was that process put in place as a barrier to weed out applicants? What technology do you use to streamline the process for potential students?

You may also want to reexamine your marketing materials. Does your website use inclusive language and depict students of various backgrounds and ages? Is your program portrayed in a modern, compelling way, or are you using the same recruitment messaging you’ve used for over a decade? Review everything an applicant encounters when researching your program and remove barriers that may discourage qualified students from applying.

4. Get talking: Ask your students what pulled them in.

Why did your current students become and stay interested in your institution? Often, what a school thinks are the most important factors may not even make the top 5 for their student populations. Talk with your students about what stood out to them during their recruitment process and understand their decision-making. How do they define success? What led them to choose your graduate program over others? Understanding that will help you highlight those factors to other interested students.

Recruitment Reimagined

Traditionally, an institution’s reputation and its faculty’s credentials drove graduate student applications. In today’s competitive world, colleges and universities cannot rely on reputation alone and must reimagine their recruitment practices, especially within their graduate programs. Students have more options than ever, and it’s crucial for your school to stand out by having modern, inclusive, and effective recruitment practices.

These tips can help jump start your graduate recruitment practice. Success won’t happen overnight, but remember: if it’s hard work, it’s good for the student.

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Micaela Lenhart, EdD

Director of Strategic Enrollment Initiatives and Operations at Kansas State University

Dr. Lenhart has been working in higher ed admissions, enrollment, and recruitment for more than thirteen years.

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3 Proven Ways on How to Recruit Graduate Students

Matching your Video Strategy to Student Recruitment LifeCycle | StudentBridge

Making College Recruitment Campaigns For Speakers of Other Languages

4 Interactive Digital College Recruitment Tools That Boost Enrollment

In today's economy, universities face fierce competition for how to recruit graduate students . A comprehensive, effective, and proactive recruitment strategy for how to recruit graduate students is vital for a university's future.

The National Center for Education Statistics predicts that post-baccalaureate (or "post-bacc") program enrollment will increase to 3.3 million students by 2030. That's a 6% increase from 3.1 million students in 2020. Between Fall 2020 and Fall 2021, the 2022 CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees report an 8.7 percent increase in applications for graduate school admission. These data indicate a significant opportunity for colleges and universities to increase their graduate student enrollment.

Whether your university offers post-bacc programs, graduate-level certificates, master's degrees, or doctoral degrees, StudentBridge's digital engagement tools can help you design recruitment strategies to attract more graduate students. Here are six creative digital engagement tools we offer to help you attract more students, whether from in-state, out-of-state or international locations:

1. Create a video viewbook

StudentBridge's Video Viewbook is a fully customizable and immersible digital experience that tells your university's story. It brings your campus to life for prospective graduate students. You can highlight your faculty members, students, facilities, off-campus housing options, graduate assistant or research opportunities, and more. Students exploring your campus through your Video Viewbook can imagine what it would feel like to live and learn at your university. They will be excited and want to take the time to learn more. You want your Video Viewbook to convince a future grad student to schedule an in-person visit.

2. Utilize an interactive campus map

When an in-person visit isn't possible or practical, we can also create an Interactive 3D Campus Map. Our Interactive 3D Campus Map can help students virtually experience what it might feel like physically walking through your campus. Our photo-realistic, 3D campus map renderings are easy to navigate and can highlight the best features and specific points of interest. We also include embedded links to additional photos, videos, or information. Our artists can create a dollhouse map that provides a look at the rooms inside a building. We can even include photos showing what the campus may look like throughout the year as the seasons change.

3. Deploy virtual events

StudentBridge's Virtual Events solution has many advantages and can attract interested graduate students. By hosting a virtual event for your university, you remove geographic barriers and can host a much larger audience than you would be able to at a physical event. We invite you to watch our webinar, "Don't Put Visitors to Sleep: 5 Virtual Events Best Practices That Convert." See Georgia Southern University's Accepted Students Day case study to learn more about our creative Virtual Events solutions.

StudentBridge's solutions take a funnel approach to guiding prospective graduate students through their journey to choose the university that's right for them.

Contact StudentBridge for H ow to Recruit Graduate Students to Your University

Contact StudentBridge today to request a demo. You can learn more about how our digital engagement solutions and services can increase graduate student enrollment for your university.

Intelligence Brief: Video engagement as predictor of enrollment

3 Strategies for increasing student enrollment this year

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• CAREER GUIDE
• 07 September 2022

Hiring and being hired: faculty members share their stories

Andy Tay is a freelance writer in Singapore.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Recruiting talented students and staff can make a difference to laboratories’ research outputs, enhance the achievements of principal investigators (PIs) and research groups, and boost the reputations of their programmes and universities. But lockdowns and border closures triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic intensified global competition for talent as many researchers grappled with anxiety about big career moves, with some preferring to stay in their current roles.

Five researchers offer advice on how to recruit and retain talented students and colleagues, based on their own experiences of being hired, and of hiring colleagues to join their research groups.

MANU PLATT: Advocate for talent and attend recruitment socials

Biomedical engineer and professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta.

Manu Platt urges members of hiring panels to advocate for talented students in their labs. Credit: Courtesy of Manu Platt

I advise members of hiring panels to advocate for talented PhD students and postdocs in their programme and incentivize them to stay. This is especially true for researchers from under-represented communities because universities are now putting more emphasis on recruiting them.

I benefited from this approach in 2006, when I was encouraged to apply for faculty positions in my department after finishing my joint PhD programme at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, both in Atlanta. Robert Nerem, a bioengineeer and my long-time mentor, had advocated for me behind the scenes. It made me feel valued and created a sense of loyalty. This motivated me to return to my old department, which I did after completing a two-year postdoctoral placement at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

I have a diverse lab and am proud of it. I’ve trained 12 PhD students — and among the 10 who have graduated so far, 4 are Black women, one is a Korean woman and one is a Filipino American man. Four women have also obtained tenure-track faculty positions. Of the 60 undergraduate researchers my lab has trained, at least 30 are from under-represented communities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Nature Career Guide: Recruitment

I do not intentionally shape the composition of the lab, but my research focus and personality tend to attract people who care about diversity, equity and inclusion. My lab works on projects that tackle conditions including aggressive breast cancer in young women in Ethiopia and sickle-cell disease, which disproportionately affect resource-poor communities — and, in the latter case, minority ethnic groups. This attracts students who care about global health and equitable health access. I enjoy cultural diversity and organize lab socials for us to learn about one another’s culture.

It is particularly challenging for junior faculty members to recruit when there are ‘superstar PIs’ in the same department. They need to actively promote their research and brand to offer something special. A good lab website lets potential students know who you are and what you do. Our photo page on lab social activities includes our participation in a Sickle Cell Disease Foundation charity race to show the fun side of my group. For the People page, I ask all lab members to pick a theme song to help prospective students learn what our team members are like as people. Mine is Drake’s ‘Nice for What’ because the lyrics celebrate Black women and empowering oneself. It feeds my soul.

Faculty members who are recruiting should try to attend all of their department’s recruiting events, such as socials, poster sessions and campus-orientation sessions. This will get your name out there and give you an opportunity to interact with students and let them know you personally. For example, I met one of my first PhD students when she was doing summer research at MIT, and I became her postdoc mentor. The ability to build rapport and trust is key to recruiting talented people.

It can be hard to shortlist a handful of candidates from hundreds of applications. I find it helpful to attend ‘Meet the Faculty Candidate’ events, at which candidates present their research visions in posters and circulate one-page research statements and CVs. Members of recruitment committees can either do a targeted search for individuals in a particular field or ‘shop’ around the poster hall looking for people doing interesting research.

The pandemic might mean that such events go hybrid, with much-reduced in-person interaction. Candidates can still shine by producing short videos to introduce themselves and their research virtually, which can be helpful when it is time to shortlist applicants for interviews.

LARA URBAN: Be fair and consider using social media

Conservation genomics researcher and principal investigator at the Helmholtz Pioneer Campus and Helmholtz AI in Munich, Germany, and at the Technical University of Munich School of Life Sciences in Freising, Germany.

Lara Urban uses social media to share research openings, and avoids making job descriptions too specific. Credit: Lydia Uddstrom

I began my own research group at Helmholtz Munich, the German Research Center for Environmental Health, in June 2022. I’d been interviewed remotely from New Zealand, seven months earlier. The hiring process consisted of a presentation and interviews over the course a week.

Internal candidates also presented virtually, so the recruitment process felt fair to people like me who couldn’t travel. The 12 interviewers included a director of diversity, equity and inclusion to make sure that the process was fair to under-represented researchers. Three of the four candidates given offers were women.

The presentations were organized in the style of open seminars, and everyone was invited to attend. This allowed me to understand the future direction of the institute by seeing the research interests of the 11 shortlisted candidates, and to evaluate if I was a good fit for the institute, and whether I would be surrounded by colleagues with whom I could collaborate.

How we boosted the number of female faculty members at our institution

It is challenging for me to hire as a junior faculty member because I am not yet established. I understand why people prefer having a senior professor as their supervisor, because experienced supervisors have a stronger track record and a more extensive professional network than I do. But joining a young lab means that students and postdocs get to learn how to set up a lab from scratch.

I plan to involve my lab members in this process, and I feel that the experience will prove extremely valuable to them — even if they move to industry to lead a team. They also get to play a central part in creating the work culture they want in a young lab.

I have two strategies to ensure that I reach out to as many candidates as possible. First, keeping the job description broad, by listing a range of desirable rather than specific skills, allows me to shortlist and interview candidates who have the right motivation. Even if their interests do not exactly match mine, we can find overlaps and think of a project that both of us are excited about. So far, I have interviewed promising candidates and have accepted my first PhD student.

Second, I make use of social media, especially Twitter, to share research openings. Junior faculty members such as me are under pressure to publish. This can create perverse incentives for us to hire candidates from ‘advantageous nations’ (by this, I mean countries from which it’s easier to recruit; so, here in Germany, that means other European Union countries). Such candidates can get on board earlier because of their visa status and because their previous degrees are more likely to be recognized. It is important to give under-represented researchers the same chance. I find that advertising jobs using social media can help to address this issue a little. Twitter gets the message out instantly — and by reaching as many potential candidates as possible, and enabling information to flow faster, it can make up for time needed for procedures such as visa applications.

MENG HOW TAN: Embrace your situation and be quick to act

Associate professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Meng How Tan keeps alumni updated on the progress of his department and encourages them to share their experiences. Credit: Nanyang Technological University, School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology

I advise hiring managers to act fast once they find a good candidate. After Singapore closed its border in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, professors here had to compete with one another for local candidates because foreign postdocs could not enter the country. I was too slow to act when a promising candidate emerged, and the person quickly found an alternative lab. I learnt my lesson and next time acted faster. When hiring, it is also crucial to work closely with colleagues in the human-resource team so that you know the legal requirements and what documents are needed to smooth the recruitment process.

As well as recruiting academic staff, I take care of non-academic affairs for undergraduate and graduate students in my department. This requires me to think of ways to attract the best students to our programmes and to engage students and alumni. I do this by organizing orientation and career talks involving alumni. I believe in keeping alumni updated on the progress of our department.

Competition to attract the best undergraduates is stiff in Singapore, where only the top 30% of the population, in academic terms, get to study at the island’s public universities. Before the pandemic, my department organized tea sessions with outstanding secondary-school students, their teachers and parents, to talk about our programmes and what undergraduates can expect to gain. We gave school talks and exhibited some of our research prototypes. In Asia, parents strongly influence what their children study. From my experience, parents are most concerned about career prospects, so we encourage alumni to share their experiences and to convince prospective students and their parents of the value of our degree programmes.

At the peak of the pandemic, my colleagues organized virtual lab tours on YouTube and reinvented our recruitment strategies. For instance, my university started featuring research related to the pandemic, including a project from my lab on COVID diagnosis. Over the past two years, we’ve seen an increase in the number of strong applicants wanting to read bioengineering.

STEPHANIE SEIDLITS: Think out of the box and provide regular updates

Associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Stephanie Seidlitis motivates new lab members by giving them the chance to start their own projects and take on leadership roles. Credit: Alireza Sohrabi

When I moved to the University of Texas at Austin in January 2022, I faced the possibility of delays in getting new lab supplies because of the pandemic. Thankfully, the university had hired me in 2021 through an adjunct appointment so that I could activate my start-up funds and begin making purchases. I felt that this was a sincere gesture, which affirmed the institution’s commitment to my recruitment and was especially important during an uncertain time such as the pandemic.

Two postdocs and one senior graduate student relocated with me from the University of California, Los Angeles. I really appreciate their support. It is incredibly valuable to have their expertise and not have to build the lab all over again by myself. It is important to recruit and retain talented lab members and to nurture them — by showing them that we’ll provide opportunities for success and exploration, for example — so that we can all benefit from working together. When lab members have moved here from another city, I motivate them by giving them the chance to start new projects, expand their professional networks (I connect them with colleagues here and in Los Angeles) and become leaders in my new lab.

It is crucial to be creative to attract talent to your lab. I could have said no to PhD students looking for a lab rotation, because my lab space was not ready when I started here, but instead I initiated a virtual rotation for several first-year PhD students. We’d already had some experience with virtual research from the start of the pandemic, so we had some idea of how to interact effectively. During virtual rotations, students were invited to lab meetings with a more senior lab member as their mentor, who involved them in analysing data for our projects and future publications. I ended up accepting two PhD students on rotation into my lab and I intend to include them as authors in future manuscripts.

XUN-LI WANG: Be focused and encourage team effort in recruiting

Professor of physics at the City University of Hong Kong.

Xun-Li Wang emphasizes the importance of referrals, and encourages colleagues to help with recruitment by using their personal contacts. Credit: City University of Hong Kong

I promote my university and department during conference talks and seminars at universities where I know there might be people interested in joining my team. When doing presentations and poster sessions, I stress to potential faculty candidates the resources that we offer, such as access to cutting-edge equipment, and the leadership opportunities available in our young and dynamic department. Our old department was split in two in 2017, and most of the faculty members went to the newly created Department of Materials Science and Engineering, leaving only 12 of us in the Department of Physics. We focused our recruitment effort on five research themes, including quantum physics and soft matter. We have now grown to 26 faculty members, including 11 who were hired during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I believe in team effort, and encourage my colleagues to help with recruitment through their personal contacts. Six recent faculty appointments came through referrals. I am also seeing more and more of my colleagues’ collaborators applying to our department, which is a good indication that our reputation is becoming stronger.

I suggest making use of both conventional and emerging advertising platforms to maximize the outcome of recruitment efforts. My department advertises faculty openings in the careers sections of Nature and Science, to reach out to a wide audience, as well as in field-specific magazines such as Physics Today and Physics World . We have also recently started using Facebook and Twitter to promote our department’s achievements and job openings on social media.

Nature 609 , S25-S27 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02828-z

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

This article is part of Nature Career Guide: Recruitment , an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

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Evaluate graduates and apprentices based on their skills and potential | NEW Early Careers Assessment

Graduate Recruitment Guide: How to recruit graduates in 2022

Recruiting high-quality entry-level hires, whether they be university graduates, college students, or those on internship programmes, is a key part of ensuring your organisation has future talent in place. In this graduate recruitment guide, we explain how to recruit graduates and early career talent and how to set up a graduate recruitment programme that meets the expectations of young talent and the needs of your business.

Trends in recruiting from colleges and universities

Firstly, planning how to recruit from universities; here are the key trends to be aware of that will enable you to build the right recruitment strategy for early careers talent.

Virtual recruiting and hiring is here to stay

Student recruitment has gone virtual and it’s here to stay. Research by the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) finds that 93% of employers have moved their recruitment process online. This may have been brought about by the pandemic, but virtual graduate recruitment is now business as usual with 48% of employers anticipating that their recruitment process will still be mainly virtual in five years’ time.

Students and early career talent are embracing virtual recruitment

Uni graduates and college students have, in the main, embraced this change. Research by Bright Network shows that 64% of students have attended a virtual careers event in the last year and 70% of students are comfortable with a fully virtual hiring process. However, not all candidates are equally as comfortable in a fully virtual environment ( those with declared disability or learning difficulty are 8% less confident taking a fully virtual process than graduates as a whole).

Diversity matters in student recruitment

ISE’s research into the biggest student recruitment trends looks at the commitment employers are making to diversity in hiring. Employers are broadening out their recruitment strategies to include targeted action on diversity strands including ethnicity, socio-economic background, disability, and gender. While 65% of employers have formal targets around diversity and have been actively developing their recruitment processes to make them more inclusive, almost all (99%) felt that they had more to do on diversity over the next five years .

A great recruitment process is critical

When planning how to recruit from universities, it’s also important to know what puts graduates off applying to an employer. 23% of graduates say that a poor or unimpressive experience when meeting representatives from the firm would discourage them and 22% say that a long and complicated application process would deter them from applying. A poll carried out by Prospects supports this, finding that uni graduates and college students are discouraged by long application forms that asked, (what they felt were) unnecessary questions or that require candidates to repeat information already supplied.

How do you attract the best graduates?

Successful student recruitment requires an understanding of what graduates and college students want . So, what does the best talent coming out of colleges and universities look for in an employer? And how can employers respond with a compelling employer brand?

Upskilling is essential to entry level jobs

Research from The Prince’s Trust shows that almost all (97%) of graduates want employers to be actively involved in their career upskilling. In turn, graduates are looking to develop, 70% of early careers candidates expect employers to invest in teaching them digital skills on the job. Bright Network’s research into what graduates want adds to this, finding that 95% of its members want to be upskilled directly by employers, with coding and commercial awareness being the skills they want to work on most. Therefore, development should be a key part of employer branding in graduate recruitment strategies and employers should consider how they can bring in mentorship and training into their graduate development programmes.

A commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion

92% of early careers talent will consider the diversity or inclusivity of an organisation before applying. Almost half (48%) of graduates will actively research a company’s commitment to diversity before applying, with only 8% saying it’s something they don’t consider at all. Organisations that want to attract young talent should be specific in their recruitment marketing about the business’ commitment to diversity and inclusion and how the company culture supports this. A fair, equitable recruitment process is an important statement for companies to make and an opportunity to tangibly move the dial on diversity in a way that can be demonstrated to graduates.

Work life balance and wellbeing

Work life balance, and people and company culture are more important to graduates than pay. When asked, 61% of graduates cited having a good work-life balance as most important, and 39% said having a good salary . Therefore, the ability to convey your organisation’s company culture, values and work-life is critical during the recruitment process. A realistic job preview, especially in a virtual setting, is an effective way to bring your organisation to life.

How to set up a graduate recruitment programme

How to attract graduates to your company.

When considering how to attract graduates to your company, there are a number of graduate recruitment strategies you can consider that work in an in-person or virtual environment, or ideally a combination of the two.

Firstly, where do graduates typically hear about opportunities to apply for? An ISE’s survey on student recruitment trends lists the most popular channels as:

· Career websites (87%)

· Social media (48%)

· Career events virtual/ in-person (40%)

In terms of which are most effective from an employer’s point of view:

· Job adverts and job posting on job boards

· Giving talks and workshops

· Careers fairs

· Social media marketing

· Insight/open days

In order to improve graduate recruitment, employers need to have a strong offering via their careers page and must support this through online and in-person recruitment marketing campaigns.

How to select the right assessments for graduate recruitment

Next, given the varied experiences of early careers talent, it’s critical for employers to choose assessments which are based around potential to do well in a role, rather than on past education or work experience.

At Sova, we design blended assessments that combine tests such as ability to learn, personality, behaviour, potential and motivational drivers into one short and engaging assessment.

Here are some elements that can be included in Sova’s offering for early careers talent:

• Interactive assessment homepages provide an idea of the working environment, the typical working day and colleague interactions. This is also an opportunity for positive employer branding.
• Themed assessments offer a more engaging way to engage with candidates while assessing for the values, behaviours and skills needed for the role.
• Realistic job previews Using a combination of video, interactive screens and two-way interview sessions, paint a picture of the role, your organisation and company culture, allowing candidates to decide whether it will be a good match for them.
• Automated assessment feedback reports help candidates understand their strengths and development areas regardless of whether they are successful in their application. They help to reduce administration and the number of requests for individual feedback too.
• Digital assessment centres eliminate the paperwork and ease the administrative burden involved in scheduling, organising, running an assessment centre and providing candidate feedback.
• One unified platform such as Sova’s platform manages all candidate communication, improving candidate experience and reducing drop-out rates. Recruiters don’t need to spend time chasing up candidates or moving them to the next stage of the process.

Create a level playing field

Lastly, making equity and fairness inherent in your graduate recruitment process is more important than ever. Since the pandemic, college students and uni graduates have experienced varying levels of opportunity. Confidence levels have dropped across the student population and those who attended a non-selective state school are more likely to say that they aren’t confident about securing a graduate-level job.

Research by Bright Network found that 85% of graduates have felt under more pressure around careers due to the impact of COVID-19 and that 77% of students feel they have struggled to connect with employers. Only 42% of graduates reported feeling ready for the world of work.

To ensure a bias-free process, Sova recommends using only assessments that are proven to be fair and a good predictor of performance, but that also do not discriminate based on access to certain knowledge or experiences.

How can I improve my graduate recruitment?

A graduate recruitment programme is a key element of your organisation’s talent strategy. An effective recruitment strategy for entry-level hires will ensure your business has the talent it needs to take it into the future. Offering early careers talent a fair, engaging, digital assessment experience is where Sova can help using our  graduate recruitment software .

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How to Effectively Recruit Graduate Students

U niversities spend significant time and resources in recruiting undergraduate students. Unfortunately, graduate recruiting efforts frequently fall victim to ineffective and inefficient practices. As a faculty member and program director of various higher education graduate programs, I have spent much of my career recruiting masters and doctoral students. I have often been frustrated by the lack of attention, planning, and the lack of expertise in how institutions recruit graduate students. In today’s post, I will share the common causes of graduate recruiting problems and discuss how to effectively recruit graduate students.

While undergraduate recruiting often differs substantially by the type of institution, graduate recruiting suffers from many of the same problems across all institutions. Obviously some institutions have more money to throw at the problem or can rely on rankings differently, but few institutions do a strong job with graduate recruiting.

Specifically, I see three common problems with graduate student recruitment:

1) Decentralization of recruiting efforts

With the inherent diversity in graduate programs, graduate schools and dean’s offices are reluctant to substantially centralize marketing and recruiting efforts. Early in my career, I would have probably resisted calls to centralize. However, I now believe that a central effort can leverage expertise and resources beyond what any individual program can bring to bear in recruiting.

Centralized recruiting efforts can’t entirely replace program efforts, but should bring experience to the table to attract prospective students into the admissions funnel. The closer a prospective student gets to the admissions review and decision, programs and faculty should take on a greater degree of responsibility. Often, faculty particularly struggle with getting inquiries into the admissions funnel which is where central support is desperately needed.

2) Lack of planning

I would venture that more than 90% of graduate programs have no comprehensive marketing and recruitment plan. There is no planning about how to drive interest in the program, identify the characteristics of prospective students, or the key strategies that will be used to recruit students.

I suspect the lack of planning stems from limited expertise and competing demands on those responsible for recruiting. Whatever the cause, the lack of planning causes serious problems for graduate programs.

3) Relying on ineffective strategies

In part because of the first two problems I’ve identified, graduate programs often rely on ineffective strategies for trying to recruit students.

For example, the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals and Noel-Levitz identified strategies that institutions say are ineffective including:

• Local print, television and radio advertising
• Purchasing lists of names to recruit adult learners
• Social media
• Using current international students to generate leads from their countries
• Mobile specific web sites and QR codes
• Alumni referral program
• Advertising in discipline-specific publications

Despite the lack of effectiveness of these strategies, it is striking how many institutions still use them. The report found anywhere from 38% to upwards of 75% of the institutions survey used strategies that were widely considered ineffective.

Effective strategies

Fortunately, there are strategies that have been found to be effective including some that cost very little money.

• Sending financial aid awards at the time of admission
• Fellowships with and without a work obligations
• Using web pages to attract inquiries
• Campus visits for admitted students
• Follow up by phone or email with students whose applications are incomplete
• Search engine optimization

Given the limitations that I’ve raised, how should graduate programs and universities seek to recruit graduate students?

1)  Consider the entire admissions funnel

Substantial effort and resources should be dedicated to growing the number and quality of inquiries entering the admissions funnel. This is an area where centralized graduate marketing and recruiting can prove enormously helpful. Department administration and faculty should play a greater role as an inquiry turns into an applicant and then an admitted student.

2)  Consider the prospective student search process when preparing marketing and recruiting plans

As recruiting plans and strategies are prepared, you should consider the things that a prospective student will consider- these will vary between institutions and disciplines. For example, are you in a big city that would draw in students or a isolated in a small town? What is the cost of living and how well do funding packages take this into account? These are the types of questions that any prospective student will consider regardless of discipline. Then, you should consider discipline specific questions such as career prospects after graduation.

3)  Balance centralized support with department expertise

One of the biggest challenges for higher education institutions is to balance the need for coordination and centralization with supporting local control, innovation, and differentiation. Historically, graduate recruiting has been substantially left to individual programs and departments with little centralization.

In today’s environment, this approach is likely to cause institutions to fall short of their graduate enrollment goals both in terms of quality and quantity. Instead, leveraging some level of centralized recruiting expertise with local department experience is likely to lead to a much more successful outcome and is a better answer to the question of how to effectively recruit graduate students.

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Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

How can a researcher in his early career attract good PhD students?

As stated by the title, I want to know what a researcher in his early career, i.e., having not had any graduated PhD student yet, can do to attract good candidates. The reason I am asking this question is because PhD applicants usually look for supervisors who have many successful PhD students.

• supervision
• early-career

• 10 Do you work in a system where students are accepted by the department, take classes, and choose advisors later, or where students apply directly to advisors and begin research immediately? –  Nate Eldredge Commented Apr 24, 2015 at 21:10
• @NateEldredge I work in a department where students are accepted by the department, begin research immediately, and choose advisors later. –  JeffE Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 2:23

8 Answers 8

Presuming you have some way to fund their work, and you have positions to offer, I suggest you start by recruiting bright undergrads from your upper-division courses. Get them involved in your research before they graduate. Offer them positions as PhD students before they apply everywhere else*. I was so excited by my PhD supervisor's work (our work really), the lab environment, and the place where I was living, that I didn't want to apply anywhere but where I already was.

Some people will object that students should move around between their undergrad and PhD, and there's some merit to these arguments, but if you have funding and can't recruit, you may want to think outside the box a bit. If you don't have any money, or your department won't give you any positions (or whatever the system is at your university), get some!

If you want to recruit from outside, keep publishing. Publish in the best places you can. Become a hot shot. Advertise openings on your website and at the end of your conference talks (if that's acceptable in your field). Be aggressive about finding good students.

*: If they do want to apply elsewhere, write them the best letter you can and wish them well. Maybe they'll stay anyway. Don't be one of those profs with a reputation for trying to control the lives of your students by refusing to write recommendation letters!

• 2 In some fields it's highly frowned upon for an undergraduate to go to grad school at the same institution, and in these cases I presume it would also be highly frowned upon for a professor to try to recruit students from their own university. –  David Z Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 10:24
• 5 @DavidZ In others, like compute science, it is very common, and diversification is expected only after Ph.D. –  jakebeal Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 10:26
• @DavidZ, I'm curious what fields it's still highly frowned upon? I've found that for every frowny anecdote we can find a highly successful counter-anecdote. –  Bill Barth Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 13:06
• @BillBarth physics for one, in the US. Or at least high-energy physics (my field), though what I've heard suggests that most other parts of physics follow the same convention. And I don't believe you can find a counter-anecdote to this - in other words, I don't believe you can find an anecdote which shows that there are no fields in which it's frowned upon for students to stay at the same institution. My point in posting the comment was not to suggest that your answer is wrong, only to point out that it's not universal and the OP should know their field's culture before taking your advice. –  David Z Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 14:17
• @DavidZ, no, the counter anecdote I was thinking of would be a successful prof who got their undergrad and PhD at the same institution. Just randomly poking around MIT's physics page, you can find someone like Joshua Winn who has their bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees all from MIT and is a professor there! –  Bill Barth Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 14:38

Adding to Bill Barth's excellent answer :

Become known to other professors. Bright undergrads who may want to switch places for their graduate studies may ask their professors for good places... so be known to those professors so they can recommend you! (After all, few undergrads already have enough of an overview of the field to know an up-and-coming junior professor.)

Collaborate with people outside your institution. Become active in your scientific organization. Volunteer for program committees. Write good reviews. Offer to review for other things than journals/conferences, e.g., if a conference you attend awards travel grants to students.

Yes, all this is a lot of work, especially since you have your career to jump-start. But to be honest, forging connections now may be a much better investment of your time in the long run than yet another paper - both to attract bright grad students and in other respects.

EDIT: so, the above addresses attracting grad students "in general". What about attracting good grad students?

First, get enough applicants. If you have three applications for every position you can fund, you have the luxury of picking the best applicant. Fill your sales funnel with enough candidates!

Second, see the above advice. Once someone approaches you and says you were recommended by professor so-and-so, you can deduce something, at least to some degree. If you know that so-and-so is good in his field and you have a good relationship with him, you likely can trust the candidate that so-and-so sent your way not to be a total loss. It makes sense for someone at the early stages of his career to give a little more weight to this kind of signal than later on, after you have had your share of Ph.D. students. You will likely end up with some better, some worse students over the course of your career, and you will learn what to look out for in a candidate - but you don't have that kind of experience yet.

Bottom line: work on your relationships.

I joined a new advisor's lab; he was in his second year as a PI when I joined, and there was only one other graduate student. I am now in my third year and we have six graduate students, one postdoc, and potentially three new postdocs on the way. We have done very well in terms of funding so far. The plural of anecdote is not data, but perhaps this will be of some help. I nearly joined a more established professor's lab, but decided to go with the new professor for these reasons, not necessarily in any order:

• Other faculty spoke highly of him.
• Older graduate students who had taken a class from him spoke very highly of him.
• The prospect of helping to build a new lab excited me.
• He was excited about his research.
• He had several interesting research projects available, with clear and understandable 3-minute summaries of each.
• He comes across as intelligent, capable, passionate, kind.
• In my first interaction with him, he handed me a paper containing the description of an experiment, and asked me to draw out the physical diagrams of how the system should respond to the experiment. He then pushed and challenged me for about two hours, and I wound up learning a lot. This gave me the impression that he would push me to become the best scientist I could be, while aiming to teach me along the way. I haven't been disappointed.
• I wasn't worried about depth of knowledge after this interaction, but he went out of his way to mention that as a member of a new lab, I would be forced to gain a great breadth of knowledge and skills, as well. This was a plus for me.
• The senior graduate student assured me that it was incredibly easy to schedule one-on-one time with the advisor, but that he did not micromanage.

Students interested in working for a new advisor will be looking for, among other things, a challenge, greater personal attention from their advisor, and interesting research. You might during the first few years feel a lot of anxiety about publishing, but you should hopefully be able to keep that anxiety in check to allow your students to grow and climb the learning curve for the first few years before putting them under too much undue pressure. You don't want to earn the reputation of the nervous overly-demanding associate professor.

Adding to Bill and Stephan's answers. There are many good PhD students who aren't just looking for advisers with massive reputations. Some sense of personal connection can go a long way in attracting students. Volunteer to teach introductory level grad courses and commit yourself to being responsive to your students. You will develop a following of people willing to pass up the opportunity to work with a more prestigious adviser for an adviser that has demonstrated a commitment to his students.

From the perspective someone who recently went through the PhD application process, I'd say that the best way to recruit good PhD students is to recruit good PhD students.

While I make no judgment as to whether or not I fall in the "good PhD student" set, I can say that my experience (and from what I've heard--most people's experiences are) was extremely opaque. The best way to convince someone to work with you is to make them feel like you want to work with them . There's nothing wrong with reaching out to students whose applications look promising in advance. In fact, most of the faculty I heard from before decisions were younger faculty. They often arranged informal Skype conversations with them and any current students they had, and they brainstormed interesting ideas for research projects that met our mutual interests. As an applicant, this made those groups much more appealing, as it seemed that the professors were excited to work with me rather than me work for them.

Then again, this answer is more specific to the US system where departments tend to make decisions about candidates rather than specific professors. I believe in Europe it's a bit different.

I would also say that if you're concerned about students choosing more established professors over you, maybe approach this the way some borderline applicants do: find the diamonds in the rough. That is, find the students that might be passed over by more prestigious/experience professors for one reason or another, but have some promise to them. This is kind of a hard thing to quantify, but sometimes a raw applicant can become your best PhD student (and similarly a new/young professor can be the best advisor).

All the answers above are good, but there is one more important thing I have learned from observing the woes of some colleagues who need graduate students. [Good ones, of course; no one that I know is actively seeking not-so-good ones!]

Good research! Ph.D. students are attracted to good and interesting topics. I have a colleague who thinks he is doing wonderful work but privately many colleagues are not surprised he's having trouble attracting students. Masters students have different goals and shorter timelines.

In my experience ultimately it has less to do with personality (exceptions, of course) and / or the stage of career you're at (early, mid or late). Students might come visit for the decor, the ambience, the attractive appetizers, but they stay only for the main course!

Well, the other way of looking at it would be the 'Theory Y' approach.

Instead of thinking 'what do I need to do to attract good PhD students', think 'what do I need to do to GROW good PhD students?'

Consider that how someone comes to you is relatively insignificant compared to what you can make them in five years. (especially at typical PhD age)

I knew a guy who was an executive at one of the largest companies in the country, and he told me "give me a rag-tag bunch of misfits, a project, and nine months, and I'll give experts, specialists, and a completed project"

I think the important thing is you have to have people that are willing to change, even if it means loosing face.

Given my scholarship I was relatively free to choose my PhD supervisor. What drew me to my current supervisor, is that although he is young he has an awesome publication list ! this gave me the impression that

• he is a successful researcher,
• his work meets the standards of top conferences in our field and
• I'll learn a lot from him.

These three points were enough to make me go through a long and risky procedure with my scholarship provider, in order to transfer to my current supervisor's department. It all worked well and indeed I am thankful that I work with him now.

So I would say, focus on advertising yourself and your work. His personal homepage was always updated with his most recent projects and publications, his name appeared everywhere when I searched for his research area, and his work was cited a lot.

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Graduate student recruitment best practices.

 Funding, prestige, location, faculty and academics all play into how prosperous an institution of higher learning is. More than anything else, however, a college or university’s success depends on the students who attend it and take their knowledge and competence out into the world.

Luckily, the application of several best practices can offer substantial rewards in the form of more student applications, greater engagement at events and online, and more impressive candidates to shine a light on your school long after they’re gone.

Want to know how it’s done? Let’s look at current trends and challenges, as well as which measures the smartest schools take to overcome them.

Current Trends In Graduate School Enrollment

Graduate school enrollment trends are a mixed bag. On the one hand, fewer students are applying to graduate school, but that doesn’t mean fewer universities are competing for their attendance. Recruitment professionals face a lot of jostling and elbow-throwing to compete for the best and brightest, and that won’t go anywhere anytime soon.

On the other hand, we’re seeing some changes for the better as well. For instance, we will see a greater number of minority students, such as those from Hispanic backgrounds, wh ose graduate school enrollment increases steadily every year .

We will also see more students from traditionally less-educated southern states.

Other changes include fewer graduates from religious and other private schools, which depending on your university, may prove a benefit or a concern. Either way, it’s good to note.

“Findings from studies across the last decade indicate that the majority of institutions regard recruitment, admissions and enrollment management as a pressing issue and technology is a frequently acknowledged solution,” says Hanover Research . “A 2012 survey revealed that assistant-ships, phone contacts, and search engine optimization are thought to be highly effective strategies among graduate student recruiters at public institutions.”

This is good news, in the sense that at least universities have a starting place. However, technologies such as phone, text and SEO are so broad as to offer almost no actionable advice in and of themselves.

Challenges In Recruiting Graduate Students

The main reason recruitment and admissions offices are seeing fewer results from their efforts is because of the rapid decline of students applying to graduate programs. When fewer students apply, you have to work harder to attract the same number.

The reasons for this vary, but include a stagnation in the number of high school graduates , an economy in which undergrad degree-holders can make significant five-figure incomes at entry-level jobs, and reports of stagnation and low pay in some fields, even with a graduate degree (especially humanities).

Other strikes against a graduate education include increases in tuition to make up for decreases in public funding , diminished academic opportunity and fewer student services.

Are these challenges insurmountable? No.

In fact, another of the main problems recruitment offices currently face is the belief that they must work harder rather than smarter . The truth is, more hustle won’t necessarily get you the results you’re looking for. Instead, you need to recreate your recruitment system so that it:

• Offers students timely information about your school and programs the moment they request it
• Encourages face-to-face contact with prospects without deprioritizing effective technological tactics
• Helps you stay in touch with prospects effortlessly throughout the research, application and enrollment process
• Presents your school in the most organized and appealing light, from the first point of contact to commencement

Luckily, by putting the right practices into place, you can do just that.

While not every college or university has cracked the recruitment code, there at least exist today some widely acknowledged beliefs on where to begin. These include:

1. Implement a Graduate Enrollment Management Plan

A graduate enrollment management plan should include your mission, goals, and target student profiles. Once you have determined what these are, you need to build those considerations into the enrollment process, coordinating student recruitment, marketing, tuition and financial aid, academic portfolio offerings, and student support services.

The plan should be broken up into three processes:

• Translate your university’s mission into a strategic plan
• Establish clear enrollment goals
• Identify optimal academic offerings
• Set up a framework for student support services
• Target key student success objectives

• Achieve and maintain optimum enrollment
• Promote student success
• Create and deliver in-demand academic programs
• Provide top quality student services
• Generate tuition revenue
• Create marketing messaging
• Collect key data to track activity and progress
• Review and continually improve cross-departmental communications and collaboration
• Look for opportunities to improve organizational efficiency
• Assess student and department satisfaction to develop improved services

2. Start Recruitment When Students Begin the Application Preparation

According to Ruffalo Noel Levitz , one of the biggest mistakes recruiters make is to wait until application time to start marketing. Prospective applicants, however, start thinking about their choices long before this.

Your best bet is to develop a marketing strategy that begins when they do. Buy GMAT and GRE test names and reach out; travel to feeder schools at all times of year; and make sure your website never has extended downtime during perceived “low” times of year (summer and winter break, for instance).

3. Respond to Inquiries Immediately

Whether it’s by phone, email, text or automatic download, it’s critical you respond to inquiries as fast as humanly (or robotically) possible.

Having a system that helps you manage all of your communications so nothing falls through the cracks and ensures that you respond to student requests right away is an absolute must.

4. Make In-Person Events Part of Your Strategy

It’s tempting to refer your recruitment efforts to online technologies that have proven effective, such as social media and SEO. However, while these are powerful tools, they are poor substitutes for the buy-in created by face-to-face tactics such as fairs, brunches, alumni events and more.

Students today are looking for personal connection as we discussed in our article, How Student CRM Recruitment Software Helps Increase College Enrollment Numbers .

5. Analyze Your Results

No matter how tried-and-true a strategy, or how exciting a novel approach, they’re not worthy anything if they don’t work for your school.

No matter what you implement, you must track the effectiveness of each method. That means using software that tracks and monitors student outreach, engagement, applications, admissions, enrollment and every other step in the graduate life cycle.

6. Use Recruiting Software That Facilitates Endless Customization

Without the capacity to customize, you lose the ability to hold onto systems that are working while implementing new systems to increase results.

Instead of switching to limited new software – especially an expensive, inefficient out of the box option – you need solutions that can integrate with systems you’re already using .

Not only that, you need modules that play nice with one another and help you create touch points for every stage of the graduate recruitment process .

Graduate student enrollment is getting more complicated and competitive every day. The old way of doing things doesn’t work when your competitors are incorporating new and more technological ways to ensure they meet their enrollment numbers.

Universities that implement a plan, use the five best practices we outlined,  and incorporate the best student recruitment software tools to get the job done stand a better chance of reaching the enrollment goals now and in the years to come.

Jeff is the founder, CEO, and Chief Software Architect of AdmissionPros. Jeff graduated with honors from Western Carolina University with a degree in Computer Science. AdmissionPros believes our success depends on building productive and successful relationships with our clients.

Ready to see how our custom software solutions can grow your numbers? Request a personliazed demonstration today!

Connect with us, admissionpros.

 Cary, NC       Tel: 919-256-3889

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3 Strategies to Recruit and Support First-Gen College Grads

• Katie Wullert,
• Chelsea Schein,
• Aaron Franklin

Researchers talked to students and recruiters to understand how employers can better engage with this often-overlooked talent pool.

Today’s employers have made great strides in building more diverse recruiting pipelines — and yet recent research suggests that one group of candidates still tends to slip through the cracks: first-generation college students. The authors share the results of a series of surveys with thousands of students and dozens of recruiters across the U.S., and they highlight three ways employers can better engage with this underutilized talent pool: End pay-to-play internships, rethink what constitutes “relevant” experience, and provide the mentorship and career coaching that first-gen candidates may be less likely to have access to on their own. Ultimately, the authors argue that employers have a responsibility to understand and address the unique challenges these job-seekers face — and that especially in the face of ever-fiercer competition for talent, they only stand to benefit from greater access to this large pool of highly qualified yet often overlooked candidates.

Stefany graduated with a STEM degree and a 3.85 GPA. She entered the job market with glowing references from five years of part-time professional experience and a track record of strong teamwork and customer service. She is exactly the kind of talent that recruiters spend thousands of dollars every year looking for. But none of them found Stefany.

• KW Katie Wullert is a Project Manager at Veris Insights. She received her PhD in Sociology from Stanford University, where she studied labor market inequality and hiring practices.
• CS Chelsea Schein is Director of University Recruiting Research at Veris Insights and a Lecturer at the Wharton School of Business, where she teaches Ethics and Social Responsibility and Negotiations. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
• AF Aaron Franklin is Vice President of Research at Veris Insights, a behavioral research and advisory services firm providing candidate insights and best practice guidance to senior Talent Acquisition Leaders at hundreds of Fortune 1000 organizations.

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UC Davis Graduate Studies

Outreach and Recruitment

First impressions matter.

The quality of a graduate program depends, in part, on having a group of intellectually talented, highly motivated, and well-prepared students from diverse backgrounds. The purpose of outreach and recruitment is to make the quality of UC Davis’ programs and faculty known to a greater and more diverse number of qualified potential graduate students — to increase the number and diversity of applications in order to ensure that top ranked applicants select UC Davis for their graduate studies.

Best Practices in Graduate Student Recruitment

Research and benchmarking.

Graduate Studies encourages graduate program faculty and staff to become familiar with documented best practices in graduate student recruitment. The following research reports address recruitment best practices, both broadly and specifically to prospective graduate student audiences.

• Noel-Levitz and NAGAP - Marketing and Student Recruitment Practices for Master's-Level Graduate Programs  The National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals (NAGAP) and Noel-Levitz conducted a national, Web-based poll to determine and report the most effective practices. Included in the findings are some benchmark admissions data from a limited number of respondents.
• Hanover Research - Best Practices in Graduate Student Recruitment In this report, Hanover Research examines best practices in graduate student recruitment. In addition, this report profiles marketing and recruiting practices at a number of large public universities.
• Ruffalo Noel Levitz - 2017 Marketing and Student Recruitment Report of Effective Practices
• Ruffalo Noel Levitz - 2018 Marketing and Student Recruitment Report of Effective Practices
• Though this new report is focused on undergraduate recruitment, it can help program faculty and staff identify the up-and-coming trends in higher education recruitment and admissions.

Tips from Graduate Studies

• Develop strategies for the full admissions funnel.
• Don't wait until prospective students apply to begin recruiting! Invest in efforts to attract inquiries and grow and shape the applicant pool. Consider traditional strategies such as tabling at grad school fairs, feeder institution visits, and GRE/GMAT name buys. Most importantly, pay special attention to your website and it's content.  Focus your efforts on strategies that will help move prospective students through the admission funnel - from inquiry to applicant, applicant to admit, admit to SIR and so on. Use the graduate program data reports developed by Graduate Studies to gain a firm understanding of your program's unique recruitment strengths and opportunities for improvement. 
• Address graduate students’ priorities on your website and in print materials.
• Prospective graduate students consistently indicate three key priorities—the quality of the program, the cost/affordability, and the pathway or career available. Be sure to highlight your faculty's research expertise as well as student career successes on your website. Don't just list it out - update your website consistently with stories and profiles of your faculty, students, postdoctoral scholars, and alumni and contact the Graduate Studies Marketing and Communications team to promote it broadly. 
• Invest time and effort in strategies that work.
• While it's tempting to invest your limited recruitment funds in glossy print publications, social media advertising, or conference travel, pay close attention to the practices that work. There are clear “best practices”—from campus visits for prospective students to web pages for international candidates to phone calls placed to admitted students—that contribute to enrollment success. Carefully track the source of your applicants and invest in the strategies that enable you to reach and recruit students that enroll. 
• Be up front with information about funding and financial support. 
• These days, prospective graduate students are often wary about making an investment in their graduate education. Be clear about the costs and funding opportunities associated with your program, and connect them to financial support information early and often.
• Use technology to build relationships and improve the prospective student experience.
• Digital communication platforms (such as the website, social media channels, and email systems) should be used to start a conversation rather than broadcast one-way messaging. Make sure that your website makes it easy for prospective students to find information, contact graduate program coordinators, and apply on the Graduate Studies website. Graduate program staff are encouraged to monitor the status of applications using Slate.

Partner with Graduate Studies

Brochures and print publications.

Graduate Studies is reducing its investment in print publications. However, we contribute to and host a number of publications in digital formats. We recommend pointing prospective students toward the UC What's Next? brochure , a UC-wide graduate studies publication that includes information on the different campuses, graduate programs, application processes, and funding opportunities. A select number of printed What's Next? brochures are also available through Graduate Studies. 

Graduate School Fairs, Conferences and Consortia

As part of a centralized outreach and recruiting effort, Graduate Studies sends representatives to numerous information fairs at California State University campuses, as well as sister UC campuses. Additionally, Graduate Studies frequently participates in a number of consortia and attends conferences that permit identification and recruitment of a diverse pool of students. Faculty members are welcome to accompany Graduate Studies staff to these events. For information about Graduate Studies' recruitment travel schedule, contact the Admissions and Outreach team .

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Phd students.

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PhD student recruitment

2025 phd recruitment opens end-september: all details available then.

Introduction

What we offer .

We offer successful applicants a place on the Crick PhD programme , and a PhD studentship that covers:

• £26,125 tax-free student stipend (living allowance) per year for four years
• Tuition fees
• If applicable, reimbursement of the student visa application fee and immigration health surcharge

Any questions?

Get in touch with us by sending a message to [email protected] .

Eligibility & academic entry criteria

Candidates of all nationalities can apply for the Crick PhD programme and studentship.

The standard Crick PhD programme and studentship academic eligibility criteria are:

• A first/upper second-class honours degree (or equivalent from a non-UK university) in a relevant subject.
• Appropriate research experience as part of, or outside of, a university degree course, or a master's degree in a relevant subject.

Please note that a small number of positions have additional eligibility criteria due to the funding that is supporting that position. If this is the case, details about the additional criteria are provided at the top of individual position page.

English skills

Applicants do not need to submit information relating to English language skills during the application process. If you are offered a Crick PhD studentship we will provide you with information on our English language requirements.

Applications

Application timeline, tuesday 05 november 2024.

Application deadline (12 noon GMT)

Tuesday 12 November 2024

Reference deadline (12 noon GMT)

By (end of the day) Thurs 19 December 2024

Applicants informed of application outcome, either invited to interview or unsuccessful

Weds 15 to Fri 17 January 2025

Panel interview, by Zoom

Monday 20 & Tuesday 21 January 2025

Open Afternoon & Lab visits, in person at the Crick

By (end of the day) Mon 10 February 2025

Final outcome communicated

Key information

• Your application must be submitted by the deadline: 12 noon (GMT), Tuesday 05 November 2024.
• We will not accept late applications. 
• We should receive your references by 12:00 noon (GMT), Tuesday 12 November 2024.

After the reference deadline:

• Your application will be reviewed first by members of the Crick’s Academic Training team (junior researchers), who will check that you meet the minimum eligibility criteria.
• After this eligibility check, your application will be made available to all the recruiting Group Leaders (up to 6) that you selected on your application form.
• In order to reduce the potential impact of unconscious bias, recruiting Group Leaders will not see your name when they first review your application.
• Group Leaders will review and shortlist applications. Some Group Leaders may invite other members of their group to participate in this initial shortlisting.
• Group Leaders will see the names of any candidates (as many as they wish) that they add to their shortlist.
• Some Group Leaders may choose to contact some applicants for an informal discussion during this shortlisting period, and so please continue to monitor your email.
• If you do not hear from a Group Leader that you selected on your application form this does not mean that you are not in active consideration; you may still be shortlisted for invitation to interview.
• The Crick receives around 1800 applications for its PhD programme. Given the high volume of applications, it take us some time to review all applications thoroughly. We will notify you of the outcome of your application by the end of the day on Thursday 19 December 2024.

After the interview

The interviews will take place over five days in January 2025 and involve a panel interview, followed by an open afternoon and lab visits. Dates are given in the timeline above.

If you are invited for interview, we will ask you to share any access or reasonable adjustment needs that we will need to support during the recruitment process.

Stage one involves a panel interview (by Zoom) with three or four recruiting Group Leaders.

The interview process will also include an open afternoon and lab visits, which will take place in person at the Crick and will involve:

• The opportunity to find out more about the Crick and the PhD programme.
• Lab visits with the Group Leaders that candidates were shortlisted by. Lab visits involve a 1-1 interview with the Group Leader and an opportunity to meet members of the research group.

Full details will be provided to candidates that are invited to interview.

Travel expenses will be covered in accordance with the guidelines provided, and accommodation will be provided if required for the open afternoon and lab visits aspects of the interviews.

The Crick will cover the cost of a visitor visa for candidates that require a visa to travel to the UK.

If you are successful in your interview and are offered a position on the Crick PhD programme, we will provide you with information on how to register at one of the Crick’s partner universities (Imperial College London, King's College London, or University College London).

The university that you register at will determined by best 'scientific fit'. Your supervisor will have identified an academic faculty member from one of the partner universities whose scientific expertise is a match for the research that you will be undertaking. You will register at the relevant university, and that academic faculty member will act as your secondary supervisor and be part of your thesis committee.

The Crick PhD Programme will begin in late September 2025.

Our PhD programme attracts the brightest scientific minds and is an opportunity for talented people to embark on their career in biomedical research.

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How to Write a Cover Letter for PhD Applications

What is a PhD cover letter?

Many institutions opt to incorporate a cover letter as part of their application process, which is likely to be accompanied by an academic CV . Whilst your CV will offer an overview of your range of qualifications, experience, and skills, your cover letter provides a specific opportunity to discuss your reasons for applying to the PhD programme and/or organisation.

The content of your letter can also discuss your relevant academic credentials in line with the position, as well as indicating the expertise you will bring to the academic department. It can also be used to clarify any potential gaps in your CV and expand on certain aspects in further detail. Ensure, however, that you avoid simply repeating information – this is a chance to build on the story that your CV aims to tell.

How to get started

Before getting the content for your letter underway, there are some key steps we would encourage you to take:

• Check whether the institution offers any guidance themselves on what they would expect you to include as part of your content. Whilst this won’t always be the case, it will be worth taking note of any advice they offer regarding their individual recruitment process.
• Look at the application process as a whole. Some institutions may require both a cover letter and a personal statement for a PhD. Although there are some similarities between the two, there are some key differences. A cover letter is often more functional – bringing together and presenting your overall application, whereas a personal statement is typically longer and provides much more detailed information around your experience, interests and aspirations. If both need to be submitted, you will need to keep this in mind and develop your content accordingly.
• Revisit and review the information offered about the programme. As you do so, note down any details about the opportunity that really appeal to you:
• Will the research draw on your previous experience and expertise?
• Does the project build on research you have undertaken as part of your undergraduate or postgraduate studies?
• If the programme has specified a supervisor, are you familiar with their work?
• Aim to start pulling together your PhD application early . Many recruitment processes will require multiple elements, including a tailored CV, a cover letter and research proposal, so allow yourself plenty of time to get your initial ideas down, time for editing, and time for finalising your application, including the content of your letter.
• Once you have drafted your initial content, consider accessing any resources and support you have at your disposal. This could mean tapping into professional contacts, for example, from your previous college or university, or contacting your current / previous careers service. Many institutions offer support to their graduates for a period of time after completion of their course, so it is worth checking if you continue to have access.

What to include in your PhD cover letter

As with any cover letter provided as part of a recruitment process, you will need to carefully consider how to present and structure your information .

Ensure you use conventional formatting – when producing a letter, ensure you use the correct formatting, with your address appearing in the top right-hand corner, the named individual [if applicable] and the institution’s address appearing on the left-hand side, and ensure the date of your application is included. There is no need to repeat any other contact information as these will be detailed on your CV.

Include a brief introductory paragraph – use the opening paragraph as an opportunity to introduce yourself as a candidate. Outline who you are, what you are currently doing – for instance, if you are a master’s student or are in employment – and indicate what PhD position or project you are applying to. Double check the advert for a reference number and include this here if one is provided.

Develop 2 – 3 paragraphs as part of the main body of your content – aim for two to three clearly-themed and concise paragraphs that discuss why you are applying for the PhD position. Consider your key achievements and highlights to ensure you develop a compelling application – you want to make an impact, encouraging the recipient to continue reading.

Once you have outlined why you want to apply for the project, you will also need to address why you are eligible by discussing your relevant skills and experience. Whilst your content will need to be concise and to the point, you need to ensure you back up any claims you make by including examples drawn from your experience.

A final paragraph should address why you want to work on the specific project and indicate your clear understanding of its potential impact. You may also choose to reference why you wish to work with the specific supervisor(s) and for the institution. Your enthusiasm will, again, need to be evidenced by incorporating your own research into the research area and/or institution.

Summarise your content – to round off your content, include a summary that reiterates both your interest in, and suitability for, the PhD position and thank the reader for taking the time to consider your application. This is also an opportunity to encourage the reader to contact you if they require further information and/or to have a discussion or plan an interview.

Include a formal closing and signature – be sure to keep your tone professional throughout your letter, including how you choose to sign off your content. This will mean avoiding the use of intimate closing statements and instead focusing on the use of more professional phrases. If you have had the opportunity to address your application to a named individual, which we would always encourage, then you have the option of signing off with ‘Yours sincerely,’. If you haven’t addressed your letter to an individual, then the use of ‘Yours faithfully,’ will be more appropriate.

Your cover letter checklist

Having developed an initial draft, utilise our checklist to enhance and finalise your content:

• Ask others to proofread your content thoroughly – often when you have invested a lot of time in an application and you are close to your content, it can be difficult to identify any mistakes. Ask a colleague, friend or current lecturer/tutor to read over your application and offer their feedback. Be receptive to constructive ideas for strengthening your application.
• Check you haven’t been vague – make sure that for every claim you have made about your experience, skills, and attributes that you have included evidence. Refer to information included as part of your CV to indicate where relevant experience may have been developed, but include as much detail as possible when explaining your achievements and what you can bring to the position and project.
• Be realistic – whilst your cover letter offers the chance to illustrate your personality and enthusiasm for the opportunity, academics considering your application will not have the time to read lengthy documents. Treat your cover letter as the opportunity it is – the chance to bring together and present your overall application. Your content should be approximately one A4 page in length. If necessary, it can be a little longer, but should not exceed two page

Here you can access our suggested template for academic cover letters , which reflects the information and advice provided in this article.

Top Ten Tips for Writing Cover Letters

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Clare Hall (née Pitkin) has been working in the UK Higher Education sector for over ten years, including with students' unions, university careers services, as well as conducting research on graduate employability and race equality in HE for the University of Birmingham. Clare completed her MA in Education Studies in 2019, with a research focus on employability in the curriculum. She has recently developed an online employability award programme for students at the University of Portsmouth, where she has also been working in information advice and guidance for eight years. Clare has regularly contributed to online careers advice content, developed workshops to enhance employability skills and prospects, and has contributed to academic journal articles.

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