IU to recruit on foreign trips

Daryl Soo knew IU was the place for him as soon as he heard about the IU Badminton Club.

The 20-year-old, who is currently serving in the Singapore Armed Forces, is an avid badminton player and was captain of his high school team in Singapore.
He sent in his application to study at IU and is hoping to be accepted for the 2014 school year.

It is potential students like Soo that Matt Beatty, director of international admissions at the IU Office of International Services, said the school is
recruiting.

Starting early this month, three OIS representatives have embarked on trips to three different continents — South America, Asia and the Middle East — for recruitment
opportunities. 

This is the second consecutive year the OIS is applying its “targeted territory management model” to overseas school visits.

For two months, the representatives will meet with counselors, teachers and students from between five and eight schools in each country.

This recruiting strategy has only become more commonplace for IU in the past five to 10 years, Beatty said.

This year, admissions officers bring with them new opportunities, including the launch of the IU Global Engagement Scholarships.

Application for the merit-based scholarship is open to potential students of all foreign nationalities applying to IU as freshmen for the 2014-2015 year.

Awards range from $1,000 to $11,000 per year and are renewable throughout the students’ four-year program.

No additional scholarship application apart from the general admissions application is required. Applicants are judged on factors like GPA and standardized testing scores.  
“These scholarships give us a way of recognizing and rewarding high-achieving students of all backgrounds,” Beatty said.

Applications are due before Feb. 1 next year — extended from the usual deadline of Nov. 1 of the previous year. This is because international students typically do not have access to the same resources as their domestic counterparts, Beatty said.

Because international applicants usually have many additional steps to complete, such as obtaining visas, deadlines may have already passed once they are ready to start their applications.

Scholarship recipients will be notified by mid-March next year.

A project developed by OIS and its partners, the Office of Scholarships and the Office of Enrollment Management, the scholarship differs from others available for international students.

The Global Engagement Scholarship process is more “automatic,” said Seth Walker, OIS assistant director of international admissions, who will be visiting schools in various parts of Asia this year.

“With the Global
Engagement Scholarship hopefully we’ll be able to defer some of those costs, which is definitely one of the main considerations for people coming from overseas,” Walker said.

Walker left the U.S. for Busan, South Korea, on Tuesday. He started visiting schools there Thursday. He will then make his way through Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and
India.

He will spend the last day of his journey, Oct. 26, in Bangalore, India.

Kwadwo Poku, fellow assistant director of international admissions, will tour four countries in the Middle East — Dubai, Doha, Muscat and Kuwait City — over two weeks in September.

Associate director of Sponsored Student Services Dan Whitmer began his school tours on Sept. 2 in Recife, Brazil. On Sept. 5 he left Brazil for Ecuador; Columbia is the last destination on his itinerary.

“It’s spending a lot of time and effort in looking where international students are coming from — building on good relationships, collaborating with alumni chapters
overseas,” Beatty said.

This year is also the second consecutive time an admissions officer is making a trip to Singapore.

There are currently 28 Singaporean students enrolled at IU, seven of which are in their first semester.

Walker will be in Singapore from Oct. 5 to 8 and will visit counselors and teachers at eight different schools.

In picking schools, Soo said he considered his geographic preference and music
interests.

An electric guitarist, he found Bloomington attractive because of its strong music culture and tradition.

He said he wanted to pursue studies at an American college because he believes the U.S. is the world leader in business.

“It is always better to learn from the best and hope that the experiences I gain from pursuing my higher level education at IU will allow me to excel beyond others in the working world,” Soo said.

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Amelia Chong on
Twitter @ameychong.