Hi can you please introduce yourself?
Sure, my name is Denise, I am from the Netherlands. At UCR I work as the Coordinator for Global Student Recruitment and Admissions and I am also a former student.
What do you do at UCR as the Coordinator for Student Recruitment and Admissions?
It’s an interesting role because it has so many different parts to it. First and foremost I am responsible for the recruitment of new students: working with students, their families, their schools and their school counselors in the process of choosing the university, and obviously the end goal is for them to choose UCR. It can be anything from workshops, to one on one meetings online, to visits on campus, to visiting their schools, so lots of different things. That’s the recruitment process. Then the other side of what I do is the admissions process so that means the applications that students submit they need to be reviewed, students need to be interviewed, decisions need to be taken. I do a bit of the administrative part of that, but I also oversee the procedures, the policies, I make sure that all of our interviewers are looking at files the same way. So yeah that’s really the two sides of what I do.
What are your day to day tasks?
With such a varied role, I don’t think there’s really a “day to day” to what I do. Of course, there’s emails every day, of course there’s admission file pushing everyday and making sure that the process goes through but besides that it can be anything from giving a workshop to students in a school in Africa, to working with a group of parents in India to organizing an open day and that makes for an interesting job in which not every day is the same.
Who do you work with on a daily basis?
Well within UCR I of course work with the people in the Communications and Recruitment office, whether it’s on creating a brochure, or figuring out who does what for one of our events, but I also work quite a lot with our Director of Education because he is formally in charge of our admissions process and I support him in that. As such, I also work with a lot of our faculty members who read and interview applications, or the faculty members that help out during recruitment events. That’s internally. Externally, I also collaborate with my counterparts in other Dutch universities who have a similar role.
How does your day usually go from the moment you get out of bed?
I get out of bed as late as possible. I brush my teeth, have some tea and then hop on the train to get to UCR. I start early because I am at my best early in the morning, so I first go over the email inboxes, see if there are any questions that need to be answered, making sure all the admissions files are up to date. That usually takes me about an hour to about two hours, depending on where we are in the year. After that, anything goes. As said, I can be having a meeting with a student coming in to the university, I could be working on a strategy document for the recruitment of next year. That varies a lot. After that I grab a quick lunch around 13:00 and then in the afternoon I tend to work with my colleagues in the office on bigger projects and after that it’s time to go home.
Any final thoughts?
Not a day is the same and a lot goes on which makes the job special. I am really excited to be wrapping up this admissions cycle and getting a little bit of quiet, but I am already looking forward to all of the things that we will be doing next year, and to welcoming all of the new students in the fall!