• Domestic audiences much prefer Autumn entry and their interest for the next available entry point peaks around a month before those start dates arrive.
• Domestic continuers are slightly more likely to seek entry in the following year’s cycle, while returners are much more focused on immediate entry points.
• International audiences are more evenly split with their entry preferences, they don’t particularly favour Spring or Autumn.
• Internationals are (necessarily) more likely to plan ahead, their interest in the next available entry point peaks around 3 months before those start dates arrive.

When do audiences want to start a UK Masters? A simple but important question for student recruitment. The earlier you understand the pipeline, the easier it is to plan ahead. So, how can we help in this regard?

Well, as part of our long running Pulse survey, we ask prospective students this very question, with respondents selecting one of the next 4 available entry points: Current Cycle Spring, Current Cycle Autumn, Next Cycle Spring, and Next Cycle Autumn.

This effectively gives us a real–time insight into the pipeline of both domestic and international students, and we publish this data in our monthly Pulse reports – which you can subscribe to here.

Today, however, we are going to be analyzing our entry point data collected over the course of 2024 to see how the pipeline shifts throughout the year, and what common themes we can discover for each audience.

Let us begin...now.

Below we have a monthly time series charting the shape of the domestic pipeline through 2024. The first thing that should become immediately obvious is that domestic audiences much prefer Autumn entry points (blue).

As we can see, Autumn interest dominates the time series. Only in the winter months does interest in Spring entry (red) compete – it is only in December that interest in Spring entry is actually greater than interest in Autumn entry, which makes sense considering that this is immediately before Spring start dates begin.

There is also a bias towards current cycle entry. Between January and August around three-quarters of domestic audiences are thinking about starting study during the next two available entry points. This then shifts from September onwards, when we see audiences starting to focus on the following Autumn cycle.

Effectively, for the majority of the year, the majority of this audience is considering the most immediate Autumn starting point. Then between October and January, Spring starts become more appealing. At which point the cycle begins again.

As a sidenote, when we split the domestic audience into those currently studying an undergraduate course (continuers) and those looking at returning to study (returners), we see different patterns emerge.

Continuers are significantly more likely to look to the future. In fact, throughout the year, they are ever-so-slightly more likely to seek start dates in the following year’s cycle (55%) than the immediate cycle (45%). This is perhaps due to some of the audience considering a break after their UG studies and others not yet being in the final year of their UG course, making the following cycle the earliest they could join.

They also have an even greater preference for Autumn starts. Their current cycle Autumn start interest peaks in Q1 and then steadily shifts towards next cycle Autumn entry throughout the year.

Conversely, Returners are far more likely to seek immediate entry, i.e. the current cycle. Throughout the year, consistently around 70% of this audience are seeking current cycle Spring or Autumn entry. Between January and September, the majority of this focus is on Autumn entry, then from October to January, that focus briefly switches to Spring starts – mirroring the trends we saw in the total domestic audience.

Now onto internationals. Do their interests differ?

Yes, in short.

That difference predominantly comes from the fact that their entry point interests are much more evenly split between Spring and Autumn. In fact, we can chunk the year into three distinct sections for internationals:

• Jan-Apr is the neutral zone – interest is almost perfectly split between Spring and Autumn entry, with a preference for the current cycle. It is worth noting, however, that interest in the next cycle Spring is at its highest in these months.
• Summer is (somewhat ironically) Autumn’s season – this is where we see Autumn interest peak. In May a shade under half of the audience are considering immediate Autumn entry but, interestingly, this interest pivots slightly towards the following Autumn as the summer progresses.
• Sept-Dec is the time of Spring starts – this is when we see interest in current cycle Spring peak (October) and interest in the next cycle begin to build.

So the key takeaways for internationals are, that they are overall more likely to consider Spring entry, and that their interest in the next available entry point tends to peak around 3 months prior to that entry point beginning. From that point onwards we see interest start to build for the following year.

It’s the most obvious question stemming from this data and the simple answer is that always-on is always a safe bet. Interest in both Autumn and Spring is consistently high, for domestic and international audiences. Building and maintaining brand awareness throughout the year is also important – Pulse data reveals that over 50% of prospective Masters students spend more than 6 months considering their degree options.

But there are times when it makes sense to maximise your visibility for courses with specific intakes:

• For upcoming Autumn entry you want to be getting in front of domestic returners audiences from May through to August – when this option dominates interest; for internationals and domestic continuers, you can start slightly earlier.
• You’ll naturally then move messaging and campaigns over to next Autumn entry, but it’s worth getting started with some of this from around June/July, when interest in this option starts to build for both audiences.
• Domestic interest in upcoming Spring really builds from October, as ‘returner’ students in particular begin thinking about study options in the new year (perfect for a January starts campaign); again, internationals and continuers are worth engaging earlier – starting from summer.
• Interest in next Spring is never particularly high (in relative terms) for domestic audiences, but peaks between October and April; for internationals it builds from the current spring.

Whatever your current focus, our team can help you find (and reach) the right audiences looking for your Masters options.

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