Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Achieves 40x ROI with Unibuddy Chat

Challenge 

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health began using Unibuddy in 2021, prompted by a website redesign that meant the school’s existing system for connecting prospective students to current students would not carry over to the new site. The original system to connect students and ambassadors was complicated, with an option to contact via email, but it took prospective students several steps to actually reach someone studying in the program they were interested in.

“When someone shared that they’re interested in a program and wanted to talk to a student, it would take five levels of communication to actually get that done,” said Lauren Black, Director of Recruitment, Communications and Events at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The process was also a burden on the admissions side. Every email exchanged between a prospective student and a current student ran through a single inbox that the team monitored directly, with no easy way to see the full picture of what was being asked or answered. 

Solution

After hearing about Unibuddy at a National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals conference, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health implemented Unibuddy Chat, layering in features gradually as the new website came together, including carousels and popcards on individual program pages.

“Unibuddy just answered a lot of what we were looking for. It’s given us more creativity in how we highlight our students, not just our academic programs, but the actual people behind them,” said Lauren.

Given the school’s large international student population, Lauren has also used Unibuddy to surface ambassadors’ home countries on their profiles, giving prospective students an easy way to find someone with a genuinely similar background and experience. Daily and weekly digest emails now flag recurring themes like funding and housing questions, informing how the team communicates more broadly, and a new partnership with the student life office has turned the platform’s blog into a shared space for both current and prospective student stories.

One ambassador’s story stood out to Lauren in particular. “She had used Unibuddy when she was looking at our school, and that’s why she wanted to be an ambassador, because she felt like it was a way to pass it forward,” said Lauren.

Impact

63% of students who used Unibuddy rated their confidence in applying to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health a 4 or 5 out of 5.  Based on first-source prospective students who went on to enrol, Unibuddy has also delivered an estimated 40x return on investment, demonstrating that personalized peer conversations are not only building applicant confidence but driving measurable enrollment outcomes.

With a large international student population and limited ability to participate in  overseas recruitment fairs, Unibuddy has become one of the only ways Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health can give prospective international students that same level of direct, personal access. Engagement consistently peaks in March and April, the school’s most critical application decision window, reinforcing that the conversations are landing exactly when they matter most.

The shift has also changed how the admissions team operates day to day. Ambassadors now participate in virtual chats, open houses, and recruitment fairs in a formal program, giving the office a list of real student stories to draw on instead of a single generic answer to “what’s it like in this program.”

“Everyone wants to know how they’ll fit into this program, or if it’s right for them,” said Lauren. “Seeing that face, seeing that person there on the platform, helps them make more confident choices.”