Influencing Student Choice: A Case Study of a Boarding Private University in Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to see the factors that influence prospective students to choose the private university in Indonesia. This research is a descriptive university study with a cross-sectional survey using a questionnaire that has open-ended questions. The literature study found a series of factors influencing prospective students in choosing the best university and marketing strategy. Interviews with new students were conducted to find out strategies and various influencing factors other than those obtained through literature studies. Then data processing is carried out with descriptive statistics to find out the best marketing strategy for conveying information to the students until they can finally determine their university choice. From the research result, it is found that the internal factors that influence the student to choose University X are the motivation for a clear job in the future, income level after alums, social position, expanding knowledge and the existence of a dormitory as a way to guarantee regular life. External factors influencing the student to choose University X are alumni with brilliant careers, qualified teaching staff, job security, campus discipline, relationships with alums and a safe and comfortable environment. Information about this factor becomes a recommendation for university X to detail the influential parts of promotion. This research is still limited to descriptive data analysis. Further research using factor analysis needs to be done to obtain factors that are pretty significant in influencing students to choose a private university. More data is needed with more universities. This is the first study on analysing factors that influence students in choosing a private campus with boarding university status .