Senior Admissions Assistant in Newcastle upon Tyne

Salary: £29,588 with progression to £31,236 per annum. Newcastle University offers a generous holiday package, the opportunity to purchase additional days, a robust pension scheme, and various health and wellbeing initiatives to support staff.

Closing Date: 28 June 2026

The Role

We are seeking highly motivated and enthusiastic individuals to join our Admissions team. The role involves handling enquiries and applications from students worldwide, processing applications for postgraduate and/or undergraduate programmes, making selection decisions, maintaining admission records, generating correspondence, and responding to applicants and academic selectors’ enquiries.

Applicants should have a deep understanding of university entry requirements for both UK and international candidates, excellent written and verbal communication skills, a commitment to delivering outstanding customer experience in an international context, numeracy, strong IT skills, and the ability to work accurately in a high‑volume, customer‑focused service.

Key Accountabilities

• Providing operational support in student recruitment and admissions, including customer relationship activity and admission decision‑making and processing.
• Developing and maintaining effective working relationships with prospective students, recruitment partners, external stakeholders, and internal colleagues across recruitment, admissions, academic units, and central services.
• Communicating with prospective students and their representatives, providing prompt, accurate information, advice, and admission decisions, and delivering an excellent customer experience.
• Maintaining accurate records relating to prospective students, admissions, and student recruitment.
• Contributing to ongoing initiatives supporting continuous improvement in process and policy.
• Developing comprehensive knowledge of prospective students, recruitment partners, and global higher education systems and qualifications.
• Maintaining operational systems and processes and ensuring compliance with policy and procedures.
• Providing guidance, training, and support to colleagues.
• Contributing to the effective and efficient running of the service through a collaborative team approach, providing assistance to colleagues as appropriate.

The Person

• Ability to work independently and flexibly as part of a multidisciplinary team, using initiative and prioritising workload in a dynamic environment.
• Ability to build and maintain strong internal and external relationships, and to work confidentially and discretely.
• Proven experience working in a busy, high‑volume, customer‑focused environment.
• Strong attention to detail and commitment to data accuracy and integrity, with the ability to work quickly and accurately to strict deadlines.
• Excellent IT skills and ability to use a range of digital systems, including large digital systems for data input, records maintenance, information extraction, and report generation.
• Excellent organisational and administrative skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills, including tact and discretion, and ability to relate to people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
• Ability to assimilate complex information and provide support and advice to prospective students, staff, and stakeholders, interpreting and applying knowledge of policies, procedures, regulation, and legislation.
• Experience of student admissions or related areas in the higher education sector or a comparable business environment is desirable.

Attributes and Behaviour

• Communicating: Provides factually correct communication with consistent verbal and non‑verbal messages; tailors content to the audience, adapting style, tone, and format appropriately; expresses content clearly and concisely.
• Planning and Organising: Manages a variable and heavy workload effectively; plans workload and tasks systematically; ensures all activities are completed on time; uses own and others’ time effectively.
• Team Working: Respects the expertise and contributions of others, even when opinions differ; shares relevant information with team members; keeps team members updated on progress; willing to help others and share workload; supports team decisions; seeks others’ opinions.
• Delivering Services: Demonstrates high energy and commitment to delivering excellent service; understands customer needs and outputs; maintains a positive attitude towards continuous improvement; pays attention to detail.
• Gathering Information: Gathers relevant information and facts; stays up to date with university issues; avoids assumptions; spots errors and ensures information accuracy.

Qualifications

• Educated to A Level or equivalent.
• Educated to degree level or equivalent, or an appropriate combination of relevant qualifications and demonstrable transferable experience is desirable.

Newcastle University is a global university that treats everyone with dignity and respect. We are a Sanctuary University, providing a welcoming and safe environment for individuals fleeing violence and persecution. We are fully inclusive and actively recruit, support, and retain colleagues from all sectors of society. We value diversity and celebrate the contributions of all employees and the communities they represent. We are proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer and encourage applications from individuals who complement our existing teams. In addition, we hold a Gold Athena Swan award for gender equality and a Race Equality Charter Bronze award. We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role. We are also a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe.