North Texas Daily

Kierra Gray / Contributing Writer

UNT international students and faculty are making efforts to recruit international students through YouTube testimonials.

UNT’s current international student population is around 3,000, with students from more than 120 countries. The International Recruitment Office is trying to make sure the population continues to grow, and one of the newest ways to do that is through the social network YouTube.

Students and alumni referrals are captured on video and uploaded to the YouTube channel “Study at UNT,” which was created in May 2012. There are currently 32 videos posted on the channel.

International Recruitment director Pieter Vermeulen said the recruitment office started creating YouTube videos to make UNT stand out from other universities.

“When a student who has had a good time here at UNT tells other students who are considering studying here at UNT, that’s the most powerful way to recruit,” Vermeulen said.

UNT graduate student Marco Arancibia just recorded a referral video to promote UNT and recruit students from his home country, Chile.

“To me, education is revolution,” Arancibia said. “It’s the real revolution. So if I can help people from my country get a good education in the United States, they can go home and help their people to improve.”

A benefit of having international students record the videos is that possible recruits can get a lot of details about UNT in their native language, Vermeulen said. The goal is to eventually have a referral video for every country represented in the student population.

“What’s new and exciting at UNT – we try to make it known to students all over the world so that when they make a decision on where they want to come, they would want to choose UNT,” Vermeulen said.

Vermeulen said UNT is appealing because of the variety of programs available and low cost of tuition.

“UNT has great faculty and strong programs, and the price of going to school in Texas is really affordable compared to the East Coast or the West Coast,” he said.

Kaori Makino, an international studies sophomore from Tokyo, said the price of tuition was a great selling point.

“There were other options as well, like California, Miami or New York, but the reason I picked UNT was it was cheaper,” Makino said.

Another major reason was because she wanted to study English seriously, and UNT’s fully accredited Intensive English Learning Institute is one of the best in the nation, she said.

Programs and low-tuition costs are important, but current and alumni student referrals are the largest contributing factors in the expansion of the international student population, Vermeulen said.

Strategic management graduate student Ming Kai Low speaks about how much he likes the business school at UNT during a UNT-International recruitment video on YouTube. Feature photo courtesy of UNT-International