Students Recruit in Middle East

Back from its recruiting trip to the Middle East over intersession, the Society of Arab Students (SAS) says it laid the groundwork for a recruiting network in the region, and spoke to “well over 1,000” high school students about admission to Harvard.

The expedition, which was funded by the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), was the first student-led recruiting trip ever, as well as the first-ever recruiting trip to the Middle East, according to the SAS and KSG.

Eight SAS members visited 30 to 40 secondary schools in nine Middle Eastern countries—including Qatar, Kuwait, Palestine, and Lebanon—over 18 days before returning to Cambridge on Feb. 5.

They also met with Jordan’s Minister of Education and Lebanon’s Culture Minister, trip organizers said.

“All in all we worked very hard to organize the events and it really paid off,” said Magdey A. Abdallah ’07, former public relations director of SAS.

At each school they visited, the students gave a short PowerPoint presentation—created in conjunction with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions—followed by a question-and-answer session, according to SAS President Deena S. Shakir ’08.

“We talked about Harvard, and what makes Harvard unique,” Shakir said. “We talked about the diversity—things that are specifically tailored to international students.”

Shakir said that many of the students contacted were high-school freshmen and sophomores who might not have considered applying to Harvard—or any American school, for that matter.

“A lot of them had no idea what a liberal arts education is—what a college education that’s not pre-professional is,” Shakir said.­

Shakir said that the undergraduates left their contact information with the schools they visited, and that they have already received 250 to 300 e-mails from interested students.

The SAS had wanted to travel to the region for several years, according to the group’s press release, but was not able to move forward with plans until this year, when it received a grant from the Governance Initiative in the Middle East, a program run by the KSG’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

“One of the key elements of the Governance Initiative is to greatly increase the exchange between the Middle East and Harvard,” said Barbara Bodine, the director of the Governance Initiative and former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen. “One of the primary elements of that is to simply increase the number of Middle Eastern students enrolled.”

The SAS sees its trip as the first step in building a recruiting network in the region, according to former SAS president Rami R. Sarafa ’07.

“We’ve established relationships with counselors in all the schools where we presented,” said Shakir, who added that SAS has created an online program where Middle Eastern students interested in applying to Harvard can submit questions.

“We want to establish relationships with them from early on in their high school career,” she said.

The SAS is also planning a presentation to be given to University administrators, faculty members, and leaders of student cultural groups, in the hope that student-led recruiting trips will be more common, according to Shakir.

“Some of the bigger schools in the [Persian] Gulf have had admissions people visit,” said Shakir. “But they said having students there made all the difference.”

Bodine agreed that students may be Harvard’s best ambassadors.

“Certainly having students who are Arab or Arab-American going out and talking about their experiences is far more effective...than if I’m out there,” Bodine said.

Shakir said that she expects the admissions office to see modest gains in applicant numbers quickly, but that Harvard may have to wait a few years to see the long-term effects of the recruiting effort.

In addition to Abdallah, Shakir and Sarafa, the other students on the recruiting trip were Ayah I. Mahgoub ’07, Ali A. Zaidi ’08, Randall S. Sarafa ’09, Nadia A. Gaber ’09, and May Habib ’07, who is also The Crimson’s Associate Managing Editor.

—Staff writer Laurence H. M. Holland can be reached at lholland@fas.harvard.edu