Grok High School Fairs, China – SPRING 2021

April 1^st saw the final visit of Grok’s Spring China High School Fairs in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. The fair schedule saw participating universities visit eight high schools over the course of four 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 Wuxi, Suzhou, and Hangzhou benefitted from a diverse range of university interactions during the fairs. This included a number of Grok Schools Community clients delivering a series of thematic presentations, along with the more traditional booth format to help students connect directly with university representatives.

“With the custom-designed brochures we created for each school, and the DIR (Data-Informed Recruitment) survey to collect student feedback, we made the fairs both more interactive for students, and effective for the participating universities to attend. Having received such a warm welcome from the participating high schools, we look forward to planning for our next fairs in the Fall.” – Ian Xu (Research Analyst, Grok China).

“These fairs provided a great opportunity to build bridges between foreign universities, like McMaster, and local high schools and students. Attending them helped us deepen our understanding towards to the current needs of international students in China.” – Leyla Zhang (McMaster University)

Overall university rankings and subject rankings were the most important factors in the student’s decision-making process. Unsurprisingly, overall cost of study was the least important factor for students – an indicator of China’s growing consumer spending power. With regards to study outcomes, ‘Employment in China’ ranked the highest in terms of importance. This suggests that Chinese students more than ever are looking to bring their overseas university experience back home and contribute to China’s burgeoning economy, rather than seek career opportunities in the country they chose to study in. This could also be a reflection of recent diplomatic tensions between China and countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. which will remain important study destinations for Chinese students to receive their education, but less attractive as long-term options for living in and pursuing a career.

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