The University of Glasgow

"We knew that the sheer number of schools and individual students Unifrog engages with would give us a reach we couldn’t achieve any other way."

Fiona Black, Head of UK Student Recruitment; Adrienn Hortobagyi, Senior International Officer; and Rhona Gordon, Senior Student Recruitment Officer


Why Unifrog

Unifrog approached us a few years ago, at a time when we were really keen to reach schools and prospective applicants. So after speaking with Unifrog’s HE team, it was clear that not partnering with them was not an option!

We knew that the sheer number of schools and individual students Unifrog engages with would give us a reach we couldn’t achieve any other way. We were attending online fairs and running our own events to reach prospective students, but the numbers were limited. Unifrog is embedded in so many schools as a key tool to help students make their decisions about UCAS and other post-16 options. So it’s an audience that’s constantly engaging with our content and not dependent on specific events at specific times.

As a Scottish University and a Russell Group university, we have a massive potential audience from Scotland, the rest of the UK, and the world. We can’t physically cover all of those spaces, so having a presence on Unifrog does a lot of that work for us.

The platform is so user friendly and engaging. The filter and rank buttons on the shortlisting tools in particular really stood out to us. Unifrog students are actively engaged in making their own choices; they’re shortlisting based on their own preferences and personalities.


Teacher and counselor engagement

I'm on the UCAS advisers Facebook group and whenever a school UCAS adviser asks for views about Unifrog, it’s a total love-fest! Teachers have said it’s a ‘fantastic resource’, ‘they love it’, and that they ‘wouldn’t be without it’. It’s clear that the customer service given to schools is excellent.

The international counselors we work with say that Unifrog is a great resource for students thinking of studying in the UK. They say it has lots of clear information and useful guides to student life and beyond. They’ve also said that the integration with Common App is easy to use and gives a helpful overview of where their students have applied.

Getting student insights

Unifrog's pre-application market insight is unique. There’s nothing else like it.

Unifrog shortlists aren’t simply links clicked – each one shows prospective students who are genuinely interested, so you can be confident that the decisions you make based on that information are well-informed. The insight comes as part of the partnership package so there is a fee, but it’s well worth the investment.

The tool is so well laid out too. It’s really easy to see trends in market share and how well we are (or aren’t!) doing compared to competitors. Breaking it down into regions is really useful for us as we’re working with limited resources whilst also trying to reach audiences across the whole of the UK.

Our Unifrog account manager, Freddie, is not just always responsive, but is actually really proactive and has alerted me to some emerging patterns. I’ve had some brilliant discussions with him that have really helped consolidate my thinking. We were discussing how the impacts of the cost of living crisis were impacting decision making, for example, and Freddie was quickly able to work with Unifrog’s data team to see how shortlists were being impacted by considerations about things like fee costs and distance from home.

I reference Unifrog all of the time in reports and we really trust its insights and market knowledge.

Reaching students across the UK

We’ve taken part in several Unifrog events, like the Study in Scotland webinars, which have been well attended by prospective applicants from across the UK. They also took place at a stage in the students’ applicant journey when engaging with them could really make a difference in how we were perceived, and generate some applications that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The matching campaigns are brilliant. We’ve mostly used them to prompt open days so far, but already we can see the impact in registrations – again, from a really diverse geographical spread. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the campaigns also helped us build an audience for some smaller on-campus events we could run at weekends, when the large-scale open days weren’t possible.

 
Building brand awareness abroad

By having a presence at international student fairs, we’re able to directly explain to prospective students the differences between studying in Scotland and the rest of the UK, like our flexible degree structure and four-year degrees. Being able to speak to students from lots of different countries is invaluable. We have a diverse student body and we’re always looking to welcome students from all over the world. 

The presentations at the international student fairs have been a brilliant opportunity to showcase the University. We’ve been so impressed by the attendance figures and the engagement.

The Unifrog staff are always extremely helpful too. For the last teachers’ conference, our account manager sent over all the information we needed well ahead of time so we knew what to expect on the day, and could prepare in advance.

We know that Unifrog currently partners with schools in over 100 countries, so it’s proved a really valuable resource and an efficient way of communicating with students and teachers. Through using Unifrog, we’re able to maximise our reach in the most efficient way possible and continue to raise our profile on an international stage.

 
Recommending Unifrog

We would absolutely recommend other Universities to work with Unifrog. Our role is to provide information to prospective students, and Unifrog gives access to students from over 3,000 schools. It’s incredible value for money.