University of Hull: Catching the highs and lows of a university application

The Challenge

A 17-year-old choosing where to apply to university is making one of the most consequential decisions of their life so far. The journey takes months. It's emotional, social, and saturated with information from countless sources, parents, teachers, friends, university websites, social media, UCAS forms.

University recruitment teams know broadly what triggers a choice. Quant and qual research has mapped the territory many times over. What's been harder to see is how a 17-year-old navigates all that influence in real time, what they're actually looking at on a Tuesday evening in October, what they're worrying about the morning after their mock results, what makes them switch from thinking about Hull to applying to Hull, or quietly pull away to elsewhere.

What we've been missing is a deeper understanding of how the students are going about navigating all of these influences at this very important stage in their lives.

For Mika Edwards and the strategy and insight team at the University of Hull, that gap mattered for two reasons. The first was strategic: recruitment communications would only be effective if they were built around how students actually felt and what they actually needed at each moment of the journey. The second was timing: by the time a traditional research project completed and reported, the cycle would already be over. Insight that arrived after results day couldn't change what the marketing team did before results day.

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The Approach

Working with Lampada, a Hull-owned insight consultancy where Kelly Charles led the project, the team designed a year-long longitudinal digital ethnographic study with 17-year-old applicants, structured deliberately to deliver insight during the recruitment cycle, not after it.

Year-long longitudinal capture via Indeemo. Applicants used the platform across their entire application journey, sharing photos, videos, notes and reflections in their own time, in their own language.

Two-phase project structure for stakeholder digestibility. Phase 1 focused on the application experience to drive applications. Phase 2 focused on the offer experience to drive conversion. Breaking the year into phases made the project tangible for internal stakeholders who needed to see clear value before signing off.

Iterative weekly insight delivery, not end-of-study debrief. The team broke the traditional reporting pattern, providing weekly updates to stakeholder groups across marketing, social, and school engagement so insights arrived in time to act on.

Same-age intern moderators. Three undergraduate interns, Ema, Lois and Zanzi, helped design the recruitment materials, the tasks, and the welcome video, and acted as a sounding board on tone and incentives. Same age, same language, immediate relatability with participants.

Existing communication channels for distribution. Instead of creating new meetings, insights were fed into the marketing team's regular sessions, social planning, and decision points. No yet-another-thing friction.

We had a unique opportunity to surface the insight as close to real time as possible and influence the current University recruitment cycle as well as planning for the next one.

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The Results

By the midpoint of the study, the team was delivering insight directly into live marketing decisions and producing content the wider business could use within days, not months.

Insight-driven social content reaching live applicants. When mock-exam anxiety surfaced consistently in diary entries, the social team created TikTok content with practical revision advice for sixth-formers. When confusion about firm, insurance and decline acceptances came through, they produced an explainer video walking applicants through the three reply types and the key UCAS dates. The Sixth Form Hot Topic Series became a recurring output driven directly by what students were saying in the diary that week.

Marketing workshops translating insight into action plans. Workshops with the marketing team built directly on diary findings, using the insight to map nurture-process improvements, set realistic objectives for the next cycle, and decide what should change at each touchpoint of the journey.

Honest, emotional content beyond expectations. The team had expected useful diary entries. They hadn't expected the openness. Students engaged so consistently they posted even when nothing to update today, and shared the emotional rollercoaster of the journey with a candour that survey data had never reached.

We weren't really prepared for just how honest and open they would be.

A new internal capability, not a one-off project. The work shifted how the institution uses insight. Digital ethnography moved from nice to have to actionable, embedded in current cycle decisions, and built the muscle for next-cycle planning at the same time.

Methodology innovations the team will carry forward. Bite-sized iterative analysis as a complement to traditional debrief. Same-age moderators for younger audiences. Existing-channel distribution to avoid stakeholder fatigue. Explicit acknowledgement of non-participation as an engagement lever. Each one tested in this project, each one becoming part of the team's standard practice.

The journey is an emotional roller coaster for the students, and we've learned it's not just about the practical aspects of applying to uni.

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