Applicant Study (UCAS)
This is not your average survey. The UCAS provides you with over 300 data points on key recruitment topics, all of which have been refined through 15 consecutive years of use and development. The UCAS™ investigates the impact of five categories of factors on applicant choice, and compares your institution against a benchmark or specific competitor institutions:
- Academic Factors including entrance averages, institutional reputation, and library holdings
- Financial Factors including scholarships, bursaries, and tuition costs
- Outcome Factors including graduate employment outcomes, grad school placements, co-ops and more
- Campus Factors including residences, extracurriculars, student life experience, athletics, and more
- Nurturing Factors including perceptions of safety, class size, size of student body, proximity to home and religious affiliation
The research is done on-line utilizing our well developed Survey Management System, providing you with instantaneous and real-time access to survey results that you can view and manipulate to explore a multitude of customer feedback. We also provide a variety of automated reports for your convenience.
For more than 15 years, the UCAS™ has asked Canadian university and college applicants to rate the impact of more than 40 key factors on the selection of their first-choice institution. Consistently, applicants report that some factors — such as academic reputation of the institution, and reputation of the program or faculty of study — are the strongest attractions of their first-choice school, while other factors — such as winning sports teams or fraternities — are distinctly unimportant.
The largest and most comprehensive survey of PSE applicants in North America, Academica Group's University & College Applicant Study™ go to field each spring. Every year, the surveys contact almost 250,000 applicants across North America, exploring their decision process, their perceptions of institutional brands and reputations, and the effectiveness and impact of recruitment marketing efforts. With more than a decade of historical trend data, competitor and comparator data, and the ability to cross-tabulate on numerous demographic, educational, and psychographic characteristics, the UCAS™ offers a wealth of untapped data to universities, colleges, and government communicators.
A new, four-tier price structure allows schools with less extensive reporting requirements to get all the key UCAS™ results for as little as $4,900 – less than the price of a single focus group.
For more information:
- Review research Fact Sheets and White Papers on this site.
- Contact Steve Brown or Bruce Thompson to discuss participating in the 2011 UCAS, or to arrange a free teleconference to introduce key campus stakeholders to the UCAS and some high-level findings.
“Academica surveys thousands of Canadian PSE applicants, analyzes trends and segment variations, and provides the most useful and actionable data I have seen in my four years at York.”
– Richard Fisher, Chief Marketing Officer, York University
“The UAS provided us with unparalleled insights into the perspectives and thought processes of, not only our own applicants, but higher education applicants across the country. The data has been invaluable to our strategic planning process.”
– Jim Vibert, Director, Communications & Marketing, Dalhousie University
“Academica Group’s report has brought our applicants into sharper focus for us, clarified the competitive landscape and assisted us with prioritizing our recruitment efforts. It has been read, discussed, and acted upon by every department at the college.”
– Marilyn Mason, Registrar, King’s University College, The University of Western Ontario
