Casting a wide net into international waters

It was spring of 1996 and Louis Nkrumah, a first-year student at the University of Ghana Medical School, found himself in a situation he never would have dreamed of a year earlier—he was being courted by some of America's top universities. The Ghanan government had closed down the medical school several months before when the school's lecturers went on strike, and Nkrumah felt he had to apply to universities abroad to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor. Now, he was being bombarded with phone calls from alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An admissions officer at Williams College sent him postcards—another at Brandeis University both wrote and called.

And then there was one school that was consistently ranked among the top U.S. universities in all the books and magazines he read, but made absolutely no effort to get his attention. In fact, it was the only school that refused to waive his application fee and sent him a flimsy five-page brochure instead of a complete viewbook. The school was Yale.

Nkrumah, now a senior in Pierson, decided to attend Yale in the end based on information he gleaned from college guidebooks. But his decision to come to Yale is a rarity in his native country. According to Nkrumah, five students from Ghana got into Yale last year, and all five decided to attend MIT. In 1997, two Ghanan students got into Yale and they too enrolled at MIT.

Yale who?

Yale's poor showing in Ghana isn't an isolated case. All around the globe—whether in Latin America, Europe, Asia, or Australia—Yale consistently lags behind top U.S. schools like Harvard and MIT in terms of name recognition and applicant draw. For instance, while Harvard had 1,985 foreign applicants for the Class of 2003, Yale just had 1,258—over 700 fewer applicants.

What accounts for this huge disparity between Yale and other prestigious universities? There are many factors that affect the complicated process of foreign admissions, including name recognition, mailings, web sites, alumni networks, and financial aid, and while schools like Harvard have mastered the game after years of effort, Yale is just starting to learn the ropes.

One of the biggest obstacles Yale faces abroad is name recognition. Ecuador native Gabi Baez, JE '00, said that in her country the words Harvard and Yale elicit very different responses. "In Ecuador, a lot of people know about Harvard, because Harvard comes up in movies and our president got his master's there," she said. "But in Ecuador, Yale is the name of a lock brand, so people were confused when I told them I was going to go to school there."

According to Vivek Sugavanam, JE '00, the same is true in his hometown of Madras, India. "If you look at movies and pop culture, Harvard is more well represented than Yale and it carries over," he said. "Only the people who are educated or are cosmopolitan recognize Yale."

Rosemary Green, associate director of admissions at Harvard, believes the fame of Harvard's graduate schools is key to its international success on the undergraduate level. "Sometimes when people say they know Harvard, they're responding to what they've read about the law school, the business school, and the Kennedy School of Government," she said. "They're not as familiar with the college."

Yale faces perhaps its greatest challenge in countries in Africa and Asia, where technical schooling is more valued than a liberal arts education. Applicants tend towards Harvard and schools with renowned engineering departments like MIT, California Institute of Technology, and Stanford University. According to Jon Reider, senior associate director of admission at Stanford, "The only schools respected in Asia are technical schools. The students are focused on science, engineering, and business, and everyone knows we're only five miles from Silicon Valley."

Paper chase

The most basic way that colleges spread the word abroad is through mailings and web sites. Yale sends out a thin brochure with black-and-white photos, and its web site doesn't have a foreign applicant section. But other schools are more creative. "Harvard, Stanford, and every other top school send a colorful viewbook to international students," Hong Kong native Ranjan Goswami, DC '02, said. "Harvard even sends another brochure just for internationals. It makes sense because foreign students know far less about American schools than Americans do. International students automatically discard Yale because they don't have any information about it."

Nkrumah relied on school brochures, available at the U.S. Information Service to get a sense of each school. "The Middlebury [College] catalog had gorgeous autumn pictures," he said. "The MIT catalog had pictures of machines that were awesome. There were lots of colorful photos that captured my imagination and made me want to be part of the American college system. The Yale booklet just had an aerial view of all the buildings. If I hadn't read more about Yale, I would not have applied."

House calls

When it comes to sending admissions officers overseas, however, Yale is ahead of the field. Unlike MIT and Stanford, Yale sends three admissions officers, including Richard Shaw, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, abroad every year. "We have been thoroughly and aggressively involved in recruiting on three continents: East Asia, Central and South America, and Europe," Shaw said. "We advertise in local newspapers and have evening programs and receptions for prospective students and in some cases visit schools."

But like other schools, Yale has had trouble penetrating Australia, Africa, and Latin America. Green noted that Harvard, despite its strong recruitment program, sends admissions officers to South America only occasionally and never to Australia or Africa. The University of Pennsylvania is the only Ivy League school that sends a representative to Latin America every year. El Salvador native Carolina Arias, SY '00, who learned about Yale through a friend who attended the University, felt that for many of her schoolmates the opportunity to talk one-on-one with a Penn recruiter had a major impact. "My school had a college fair, and a representative from Penn came," she said. "The Penn recruiter answered a lot of questions, and people who wouldn't have done so otherwise applied to Penn. I think a lot more people would apply to Yale if it recruited there."

Getting networked

Since recruiting trips require a lot of time and money, the corps of Yale alumni overseas is the foundation of Yale's recruitment program. In areas such as Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, and France, where there are strong alumni associations, there is also strong recruitment. According to Goswami, the Yale Club of Hong Kong is a prime example of this correlation. When he was a junior in high school, the club gave him and seven other Hong Kong students Yale Book Awards. From that point on, Yale reeled him in. "The Yale Club of Hong Kong organized an event for the award winners in which Professor Jonathan Spence [SY '61, GRD '65] talked about his most recent book," Goswami explained. "Of the 10 or 13 students that are accepted, almost all enroll because of alumni efforts."

Robert Bonds, BK '71, vice president of the Yale Club of Hong Kong, said the club became active in the recruiting process only recently. "We received Association of Yale Alumni (AYA) material from time to time modeled on how Yale Clubs in the U.S. do recruiting, and it occurred to us that we could do the same thing out here," he said. In addition to instituting the Book Awards in 1992 to let "local kids know that Yale is a real place, and not just somewhere beyond Valhalla," the club has a reception for accepted students, sets up two booths at the annual U.S. University Fair, and even has a web site with information about Yale College. The results of the club's efforts have been impressive. "As recently as the Class of 1996, we seldom had more than 15 or 16 kids applying every year, and when Yale accepted three kids from Hong Kong into the class of 1996, it was a record," he said. "But since then, the number of students applying has increased dramatically, and for the past several years we've always had at least 50."

Unfortunately, areas with few alum-ni have few applicants. Duff Watkins, DIV '80, president of the Yale Club of Sydney, Australia, said his club is strictly social and doesn't get involved in recruiting, so few students know where to get information about Yale. "The Yale name is well known in Sydney and well regarded, but—and I hate to admit it—Harvard's is better known because they have a bigger and better organized alumni club," he said.

Indeed, Harvard's overseas alumni network dwarfs Yale's. "We have a huge number of graduate school alumni abroad," Green said. While Yale has 40 alumni associations abroad, Harvard has 57, including clubs in hard-to-recruit areas such as Latin America and Africa.

Shaw said he is concerned about the fact that Yale is considered a second-tier university overseas, but stressed that the situation is unavoidable due to the size of Harvard's alumni network. "The Harvard clubs are very big because if you even just set foot in Cambridge, you're an alum," he said. "They develop an affinity to the school and become its cheerleaders. We're more conservative about who's a member of the Yale alumni association."

That said, Yale is trying to find innovative ways to compensate for its smaller alumni network. Shaw said the admissions office has various plans in the works, including sending professors who are knowledgeable about Africa there to spread the word about the University. Admissions has also experimented with teleconferencing with alumni in the Persian Gulf. "It might even take the place of visiting more traditional markets," Shaw said. In addition, Yale recently became a member of the European Council of International Schools, which provides international educational counseling to students at over 500 schools across the world.

Show me the money

Even when foreign students apply and are accepted, Yale sometimes loses them because it does not follow a need-blind admissions policy with respect to foreign students. This can make it impossible for applicants who must incur hefty travel expenses to attend Yale. "Almost every African who wants to come to the U.S. will need some sort of assistance," Nkrumah said. "Dartmouth, MIT, Harvard are known for giving better aid. In the end, it all comes down to the financial aid policy." Indeed, Harvard is the only top university that is need-blind towards internationals.

University President Richard Levin, GRD '74, defended Yale's financial aid policy. "Harvard claims to admit international students need-blind and to fund their full need, yet for the past two years international students have been a larger percentage of [Yale's] freshman class," he said. In fact, Levin has made major strides in this area. Two years ago, he increased the pool of financial aid funds available for international students by 50 percent.

Shaw agreed with Levin that Yale's current financial aid package for foreign students is competitive with Harvard's. "Yale is close to being need-blind, but there are just always some kids we have to take out," he said. "We're very close to accomodating all of the competitive applicants." Levin said he would not rule out the possibility of increasing the financial aid pool even further in the future.

The Shaw solution

Admissions experts and Yale alumni alike agree that Yale's admissions program has made much progress in the past few years, and they credit this turnaround to Shaw's 1992 appointment. "The attitude of Yale's admissions office used to be `We're Yale, George Bush [DC '48] went here, we're famous,'" Reider said. "Dean Shaw saw it was too clubby and decided to open it up and increase recruitment efforts abroad."

Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, and the Administration supported Shaw's initiatives. "When I was first appointed Dean, I was quite surprised to learn how small the number of international students was," he said. "About five years ago, we made a conscious policy change. Now the percentage of international students has increased to six or seven percent of the undergraduate population from the two percent of five years ago."

Alumni abroad have also recognized these efforts. Sam Carmalt, BR '66, chair of the Yale Club of Switzerland, was frustrated for years that he couldn't get Swiss students interested in Yale. He watched as all the top students in his area enrolled at Harvard because they sent an admissions officer every year. "Until about 10 years ago, our club couldn't get the admissions office much interested in coming here," he explained. "Once the admissions office started sending a staff member to travel in Europe each fall, student interest quickened. The admissions office has been much more interested in foreign students since the arrival of Dean Shaw."

Still, Yale's international student applicant program has a long way to go before it can give Harvard a run for its money or challenge the hegemony of technical universities like MIT in developing nations. But Goswami believes that with the changes of the past few years, Yale is now in a good position to achieve those goals, as long as it continues to pursue a global network aggressively. "Why are we selling ourselves short when it's so easy to market Yale?"

Photo of catalog courtesy of Office of Admissions.

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