In light of the uncertainty that the Covid-19 pandemic has created around international student recruitment, the British Council USA sent a short survey to its counsellor e-mail list and to the NACAC Exchange listserv on 8 April 2020. The survey was sent to better understand what challenges counsellors are facing in advising their students who are considering the UK and what type of support they would like from the UK sector. We summarised the responses to each of the survey questions below, paraphrasing responses and aggregating topics to give a reflection of the current concerns and topics which are top of mind for US counsellors at this moment.

The summary includes the top challenges that counsellors are experiencing with students who were considering studying in the UK, how counsellors think the Covid-19 pandemic will impact their students’ decisions to go abroad for university, and what counsellors think UK universities can be doing to support prospective US students in their current decision-making.

Some of the top take-aways from the survey included:
-Counsellors' current top challenge with working with US students who are considering the UK is how to advise seniors who are holding conditional offers and are unsure if they'll be able to take the tests they need to meet their conditional offers.
-The top piece of advice which counsellors gave for UK universities working with US students was to have consistent, clear and proactive communication with prospective students, even if universities don't have all of the answers for this fall.
-Counsellors were split in their views about how the Covid-19 pandemic will affect student's desire to study in the UK. Some think that the pandemic will not dampen student's desires to study abroad while others feel that the fear and unknown, particularly around how the fall will look like, will deter students from studying in the UK, and that parents especially will be encouraging their children to study closer to home.

The survey accompanied the announcement of the Covid-19 UK response online tool for USA counsellors. UK institutions can submit information such as virtual events and contact information during campus closures to be included. The online tool can be updated by universities as new events are added, etc.