Before: many voices, no single home.
University College Cork (UCC) is a large and lively university with over 26,000 students from over 100 countries. UCC offers hundreds of undergraduate and postgraduate courses spanning many disciplines. At UCC, you will also find over 100 societies and over 50 sports clubs, making the student experience extra special. Traditionally, the majority of pre‑arrival communication for offer holders was delivered via email and webinars. There was a gap in the absence of a student‑to‑student digital space, even though instant peer connection is vital to decision‑making.
Lenka Forrest, Head of Student Recruitment, stressed the importance of having a peer community for their future students: “One of the significant values of a peer-to-peer platform to the university from a student recruitment point of view is during the time between the offer and the time when a student accepts it. At UCC, we give applicants up to four weeks to think about accepting our offer, and that’s when peer-to-peer interaction is really, really important. We wanted applicants to get a glimpse into what awaits them when they become our students and ‘hear it from the horse’s mouth’.”
More importantly, the team needed something that scales to the large cohorts of international undergraduate and all postgraduate students without creating an admin headache: “Ireland is a nation of storytellers and great conversations, and we wanted to encourage authentic real-time conversion, and simultaneously to minimise the number of queries going to different departments. The aim was to create a positive connection and a great pre-departure experience.”
Now: one home for new students.
UCC’s student-led community through the Uni-Life app gave future students one central, safe place to connect, form groups and start building a sense of belonging before they enrol, under light-touch university oversight.
Each new offer holder received an invitation with a unique access code to join the private Uni-Life community. From there, peer-to-peer chats and discussions helped students get quick answers to big pre-arrival questions and make early friends-building confidence and reducing last-minute withdrawals.
“We really wanted them to feel part of the UCC community before they arrived. It’s reassuring for all of them to see others in a similar situation: those who are still looking for accommodation or for the perfect sports team to join, others looking to find a store stocking ingredients from their home country, or simply ask whatever question comes to their mind.”, Lenka emphasised.
Students echo that impact in their own words:
“I made my first friends in Cork through Uni‑Life!”
“It was a relief to see others had the same questions.”
“I really liked the app, and it made it easier to connect with other students. As a visiting student, it helped a lot to have this social network”
For most users, Uni-Life provides a safe space to interact, build confidence, and ultimately, confidence drives enrolment.
Low lift for the team, high impact for students!
For UCC staff, the platform stays deliberately low lift. A dedicated Uni-Life community manager takes care of moderation and engagement, so the UCC team doesn’t need to be on‑screen 24/7.
Lenka praised the low effort set-up and minimal monitoring from the university side: “It gave us peace of mind; it looks after itself. It took away the administrative burden from us.”
Besides taking the burden from the already stretched team, Lenka was also impressed by the student-led nature of Uni-Life: “It’s very light‑touch, and the focus is on students interacting with each other rather than top‑down messaging from us.”
At the same time, it’s been brilliant to see how present UCC staff chose to be inside the community. Ruth O’Mahony, Support Officer for International Students, actively engaged with future students by answering questions, offering practical guidance and setting a supportive tone. She has also organised a series of pre-departure and post-arrival webinars and events, which were featured in the apps’ Event section. Such visibility built trust early, gave offer-holders a chance to interact with university staff before arrival, and complemented the peer-to-peer conversations already happening in the space.
Turning intent into commitment.
“Engagement before arrival is crucial. Don’t underestimate how much students will organise themselves when given a tool they like.”
The platform became a hub of connection and conversation once launched. Even though it was only deployed towards the end of the recruitment cycle, in late spring 2025, when many students had already decided to accept UCC’s offer, 64% of the surveyed students felt more confident about enrolling and starting their studies at UCC after joining Uni-Life. Over 31,000 one‑to‑one messages have been sent since launch, and a lot of group chats have had engaging conversations.
UCC didn’t add another broadcast channel; they gave offer-holders a place to interact and feel a sense of belonging. Students found answers, found each other, and found confidence to say “yes” to UCC and continued using the app during orientation and registration and well into the first semester of the 2025/2026 academic year.
