Grok Schools Community High School Fairs, China – Summer 2023

June saw the final leg of Grok’s Summer High School Fairs in Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, China. The fair schedule saw participating universities visit five high schools over the course of five days, meeting with hundreds of students eager to pursue an overseas education.

The attending high school students in the tier-2 and tier-3 cities of Ningbo and Hefei benefitted from a diverse range of university interactions during the fairs. This included a number of Grok Schools Community institutions delivering a series of information sessions along with the more in-depth thematic workshops to help students connect directly with university representatives.

“With the custom-designed promotional materials we created for the schools, and the DIR (Data-Informed Recruitment) survey designed to collect student feedback on overseas study sentiment, we made the fairs both more interactive for students, and effective for the participating universities to attend.” – Muyuan Liu (Grok Schools Community Manager).

Speaking about her involvement in the fairs, Lin Zheng from the University of Connecticut added: “I do love the schools here in Ningbo. Some of them are public schools with international departments; some of them are international schools. Students and parents here are open to different topics about the university. They want to know about the rankings, but they want to know more about campus life and the specific majors offered at UConn. This is something I really love to talk with the college counselors and students here”.

As part of the fairs, close to 200 students completed a post-event survey capturing data on student decision making sentiment relevant to overseas university study. Some of the key findings from this data are highlighted below:

• 67% of students answered that they have an annual budget of over 250,000 RMB to study abroad.
• The United States remains the most popular destination for the surveyed Chinese students, followed by Canada, the UK, and Australia.
• Other stated learning destinations included Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.
• Business/Management is the most popular subject area with 26% of surveyed students stating it as their preferred subject area, followed by Math/Computer Science (12%) and Fine/Applied Arts (12%).
• High school counsellors, agents, and official university websites made up the top 3 information channels for students during the university application
• Overall ranking is the most important factor for students when choosing a university or
• The employment rate abroad and domestically within China were the two most important outcome for students upon graduation.

When asking the students to rank important factors when choosing a university, we can see that overall university rankings and subject rankings remain of central importance during the university application process. Entry requirements, location, and employment rates are also considered important factors in the application process, indicating that Chinese students are making more rational and balanced choices for overseas education.

To find out more about the Grok School’s Community or Grok’s high school fairs, please contact David Prentice – david.prentice@grokglobal.com