Mad March: surviving one of the busiest months in student recruitment
If you work in outreach, schools liaison or student recruitment, you don’t need this explained. But for anyone who hasn’t lived it, here’s what’s happening with these superstars right now.
It’s March. You’re probably living out of your car or an endless string of budget hotels and you’ve no idea what day of the week it is anymore.
UCAS fairs
Open days
School visits
Offer-holder events
Student finance talks
More miles than you’d like to count.
We’ve been there. We know what it’s like. But those conversations, the “I’m not sure I’m good enough” or “my parents want me to do this” ones are some of the most rewarding parts of the job that make it all worth it.
Being busy is great. But is it connected?
March energy is brilliant. You’re representing your institution at its best. You’re answering questions that genuinely influence decisions. You’re building trust.
But in amongst that it’s worth asking:
Is your system helping you, or are you helping it?
Are events flowing straight into your calendar?
Is iPad data captured (online and offline) feeding directly into your CRM?
Are the students you’ve just spoken to getting a warm follow-up while they’re on the bus home, and a lovely sequence of automated comms after that?
Are those barcode scans from UCAS fairs building a meaningful picture of interaction with both quantitative and qualitative insight being captured?
Or… is some of it heading into yet another spreadsheet to be manually uploaded days or weeks later when you’re back in office and finally have a minute.
We hear the same pattern again and again:
Scan the badge.
Make notes somewhere.
Export a list later.
Try to match it up.
Hope nothing gets lost.
Meet a brilliant school contact.
Promise yourself you’ll follow up properly. Run out of hours in the day. Cry with frustration.
That’s not a people problem. It’s a systems problem.
The spreadsheet spiral
There’s a particular kind of pain that comes with updating spreadsheets after a 10-hour event day, especially when someone quite reasonably asks, “Are the fairs converting?”
You’ve done the work. The conversations were good. But proving the impact? That’s another job entirely.
Which schools are showing momentum?
Who attended an open day after meeting us at the Manchester UCAS Fair?
Did those fairs convert?
The question isn’t whether you’re working hard enough. It’s whether your systems are capturing the story as it happens - or whether you’re rebuilding it manually afterwards.
Let’s turn Mad March into Marvellous March
March will always be busy, that’s the nature of the cycle. But it doesn’t have to be chaotic.
We’ve stood in those halls. We’ve done those miles. We understand the pace, and the frustration when great engagement isn’t reflected in clear insight.
But events can flow straight into calendars. Scanned interactions can automatically build a student record. Notes can sit alongside engagement history. Teams can see the journey forming in real time, (and so can your boss, without chasing you down when you’re on the road like you have nothing better to do!). With the right systems behind you, Mad March can start to feel a lot more like Marvellous March - the same energy, the same great conversations, but without the spreadsheet spiral afterwards.
As our Founder Dom puts it, “When I first looked at how universities and colleges were recruiting students, I saw talented teams working incredibly hard but being held back by the wrong tools. Generic systems couldn’t handle seasonal peaks, complex journeys, or compliance, and too often, staff were fighting technology instead of focusing on students.”
So here’s our offer.
When March is over and you’ve finally had a proper night’s sleep, book a 30-minute “Mad March Debrief” with us - talk directly with people who until recently were doing this for their own unis (and somewhere deep we still miss the thrill of it all).
Bring the stories. Bring the frustrations. We’ll bring the coffee voucher. We’ll listen and we’ll show you how next year could feel very different.
