How do you match students and host families?

It’s a question we get asked a lot – by parents, students and hosts! We understand the importance of getting a match that works well both for you as hosts, and for the student. Our team have a great deal of experience when it comes to matching students and host families. We take time to find good matches and often get to see life-long bonds being formed.

The first step…

We take time getting to know our hosts and students so that we are able to pair them well. When you sign up as a host we’ll either have a chat over the phone to get to know you, or we’ll ask you to tell us about you on our registration form. Things we like to find out about include your

• family
• home and the area you live in
• hobbies and interests
• background and job
• whether you have an age or gender preference

The more details you can give us, the better! We take all information into consideration – for example, if you tell us you’ve got pets, we’ll know it’s a good idea to pair you with an animal lover and not a student who is going to be afraid of them!

Just as we ask you to tell us about you, we also ask our students to do the same. It’s not a one sided matching process – it’s important that you’re both going to be happy with the match.

One of the most important questions we ask our students is about the level of family involvement they would like to have whilst staying with a host. We’ll ask you this too and get you to rank on a scale from 1 (little to no involvement with family life) to 10 (full involvement with family life). This way, we know not to pair a student who wants level 1 involvement with a host family who wants level 10! It means that you and your student will be on the same page when they come to stay.

What happens once you’ve matched me with an international student?

Once we think we’ve got a good match we’ll send you the student’s profile. Their profile includes a photo and a little bit about them, including any important information such as allergies. We’ll also create a host profile for you based off the information you’ve given us, so that they can familiarise themselves with you before they arrive.

What if the match with my student isn’t working out?

We’re sure that you’ll have a great time with the student we pair you with, but in an event where you aren’t getting on as well as you’d hoped, get in touch with us. We’ll try to resolve any issues first, but if either you or the student are unhappy, we’ll switch host families and students around until we find everyone’s perfect match.

Find out more about becoming a host for international students.

This article appears in the following categories  Host Families, Students