The Office of Admissions is planning an October recruitment tour of Southeast Asia with an itinerary that includes a country its representatives have never before visited: Vietnam.
The trip, which Assistant Director of Admissions Kerrin Damon will make with a colleague from Northeastern University, will capitalize on the growing economy that has mobilized the country as a nascent global force.
While Tufts administrators have pitched the university in countries all across the world, Director of International Recruitment Jennifer Simons said that Vietnam's economic history had previously suggested that it would not be a fertile recruiting ground.
Also, prior generations from the Vietnam War era had considered it "forbidden" territory, she said.
But the economic situation has greatly changed. Last year, for example, Vietnam had the second fastest-growing economy in all of Asia (trailing only China) and expanded its opportunities with its acceptance into the World Trade Organization. It is also the 13th most populous country in the world, with over 85 million people.
Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin said that these realities make it an ideal place to visit.
"We are always examining new opportunities to expand our admissions work," he said in an e-mail. "Vietnam seems like a logical next step."
A country's financial wellbeing is particularly important to Coffin's office because financial aid for international students is very limited.
"We don't want to get students too excited about Tufts if we know financially it would not be possible for them to attend," Damon said in an e-mail.
While Beyond Boundaries, Tufts' ongoing capital campaign, may help rectify this situation, Vietnamese representation at the university has suffered in the meantime.
This year's freshman class has students from over 60 foreign countries, but Coffin said that only six Vietnamese students applied and none of them were accepted.
Most of Tufts' success in Asia has instead come from Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. There has also been a recent spike in applications from Singapore.
But recent and future trips suggest that the administration is aiming to expand Asian representation.
The International Board of Overseers has been particularly active in this effort. Tufts officials returned just last week from a board-sponsored trip to China and Hong Kong, which followed a 2005 trip to India.
Simons will return to all three locations during a three-week trip that began on Friday. She will also travel to Singapore and South Korea. Damon's trip will also include stops in Thailand and Taiwan.
Whether these trips will be successful in terms of increasing regional recruitment is still unclear.
In Vietnam, in particular, it remains to be seen whether the university can take advantage of a 25 percent growth from the 2004-05 to 2005-06 school years in the number of students from the country who attend American universities.
"It usually takes some time to grow visibility in a new recruitment market," Damon said.
