Admissions Systems

UNC Wilmington analyzed their outdated, time-consuming, and cumbersome business processes in the Graduate Admissions Office and reengineered them using workflow and imaging technologies currently available in both cost-effective and time-efficient ways. The reengineered process not only allows us to successfully recruit bright and talented applicants but also enables us to fulfill UNC system strategic goals and initiatives. The implemented process saves personnel hours, reduces application decision time, and enables us to be a greener university while affording us more time for student recruitment. Join us for a metaphorically journey through the metamorphosis of cocoon to butterfly.

Overrun by paper, Temple University implemented a document imaging and electronic workflow solution to improve the processing of over 300,000 paper documents associated with the undergraduate admissions process. This implementation not only eliminated paper but also reworked the internal processing of applications and completely automated the entire admissions process.

This meeting will focus on the ways in which information technologies affect specialized operations, including software selection, staff training, standards and best practices, record-keeping and access, and data storage and retrieval. Come share your pitfalls, best practices, and proven solutions with your colleagues.

Florida State University has used business intelligence to reengineer much of our admissions processes, including decision processing, back-office workflow, data auditing, and reporting. Leveraging data gives us a strategic advantage in managing head count, quality, and diversity. We will discuss data uses, as well as organizational and process change.

Hear firsthand how the University of Mississippi is streamlining admissions and enrollment management from a leader in the enterprise application software market, SAP. SAP for Higher Education & Research provides universities with a comprehensive set of solutions to support the entire student life cycle from prospect to alumni. With multichannel prospecting, recruitment and enrollment management, streamlined admissions, flexible academic structure and scheduling, student administration, and Web-based self-service, SAP software drives value university-wide.

Enhanced enrollment, reflected in both quality and quantity of students, is a strategic initiative for Washington State University. While our focus on recruitment of new students was paying off with increased numbers of freshmen, the number of incoming transfer students was not keeping pace. Our President urged us to do whatever was necessary to attract transfer students for the following semester. Two top questions that potential transfer students always ask are: "How will my classes transfer?" and "How long will it take to finish my degree program?" We were told that some competing institutions in our state attempted to provide that information 30 minutes after the student came to their office with transcript in hand. Could we leverage technology to do better?

In 1998, WSU launched Web-based admission applications. Over half of all undergraduate applications are now received electronically. While providing an attractive service to students, processing electronic applications was very similar to that for mail-in applications: they were downloaded, printed, and queued for manual processing where all data was keyed for a second time by admissions staff.

A similar situation existed for prospective student information requests, which at that time were received via Web-based e-mail forms, printed, and queued for manual processing. During peak periods, information requests could sit for weeks while hot prospects turned cold waiting for a response from WSU.

In both cases, manual processing was required to match demographic data for the applicant or prospective student against the central "associate" file to determine if the person was already on file or a new WSU ID should be created. The rudimentary search tool that was used provided only a name browse and Social Security Number (SSN) lookup, resulting in a high number of unmatched associates and subsequent duplicate records created.