University of South Australia takes its recruitment strategy to a new level with our student-centred app, IDP Live

Each year we like to celebrate the successes of our students, partners, and teams. Bringing together all these stakeholders, FastLane has been at the forefront of success. Since its launch in 2021, FastLane has transformed the application process for prospective international students. In the last year, 17,500 students have received formal offers after gaining an offer-in-principle using FastLane with over 4,200 listed courses for them to choose from.

The app is also available in 18 student markets around the world at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, giving access to more prospective students than ever before and helping universities with diversification. Reflecting the ever-expanding scale of the app, one in eight of IDP's students bound for Australia used FastLane, while one in nine of our IDP UK-bound students were FastLane users within the first year of its launch.

FastLane partners are reaping the benefits. Over 90 institutions, including over 40 UK institutions, have now opted to use the FastLane service to recruit high-quality international students, improve efficiencies among admissions teams and accelerate their recruitment processes.

A free service for both institutions and prospective students, FastLane can now be adopted by institutions at a faster rate than ever before. The new onboarding process requires just one hour of our clients’ time for us to be able to complete the rest of the onboarding in under 2 weeks! This is a significant reduction in time from the previous onboarding period of 10 weeks. All we need from the university is one hour of their time and then within two weeks of work on our side, they can be successfully onboarded as FastLane partners. Our Client Enablement team works with new partners to set up the academic requirement for the issuance of offers-in-principles and thereafter partners receive ongoing support from our Client Success team to ensure best results.

 “FastLane has been transformative for the University of Hertfordshire. It has helped us to turn applications around much quicker, to keep students engaged with our processes, and to better convert students that are well-matched to our institution,” says Dean Lee, International Admissions Manager at the University of Hertfordshire.

The University of Hertfordshire signed up to IDP’s FastLane service with the intention of improving turnaround times of international applications, recruiting well-matched applicants, and increasing conversion rates. Since becoming a FastLane partner, the application-to-offer rate has increased to 36% compared to their standard rate.

FastLane filters applications, so that they match the university’s academic criteria, thereby also significantly reducing the hours spent rejecting unsuitable applications. In the University of Hertfordshire’s case, 540 hours of time spent rejecting applications were saved.

So, how does FastLane work?

FastLane matches students to live admissions criteria rules, allowing IDP to make offers-in-principle to verified students who meet the criteria. Institutions offer FastLane students quicker turnaround times and offer institutions improved admissions efficiency. Here’s how it works:

FastLane ultimately makes the application process much simpler for prospective students, avoiding complicated and disconnected application processes across multiple platforms and bringing everything onto one trusted platform. It also speeds up the application process for students, preventing them from enduring long waiting periods where they are more likely to lose interest. Prospective students can receive an offer-in-principle within 30 minutes of using FastLane.

Ray Nandini, an IDP student now studying in the UK, says: “We used the FastLane process to check if I was eligible. We checked and I was eligible for my top-choice and received my in-principle offer. I received my offer within one day. I was honestly so happy to receive my offer. I would recommend IDP to anyone.”