Intelligent admission: with college applications reaching record levels, IHEs are using technology to work smarter and more efficiently

University Business, March, 2003 by Tim Goral

College admissions have made national headlines in recent months, not only because of the debates over early decision and affirmative action, but due to the sheer numbers of prospective students applying. In top-tier schools, for example, Dartmouth College received a record 11,700 applications by its January 1 deadline, a 13 percent bump over the previous year's 10,143. Yale had a total of 17,350 applications, 12.3 percent above the previous year. Harvard saw a 6.7 percent increase (20,918 applications received), and Columbia and Brown racked up 3.5 and 2.8 percent bumps respectively.

"Many schools are seeing huge increases," explains Marilee Jones, dean of Admissions for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "There's a new demographic of 18-year-olds; these students are more highly qualified than ever before, and more of them are applying to more schools."

What this means is an increasingly difficult task for the university Admissions office, notes Jones. "In a five-year span, we've had to deal with a 33 percent increase in MIT applications," she says. "Ten years ago, we just sent materials in paper form. Now we produce paper documents in addition to electronic materials, and we have a Web presence as well. There is so much work to do to provide the same quality we did a decade ago, but we've had to do it with the same size staff in a period of shrinking funds. It has forced us to go back and figure out how to do what we do more efficiently."

The challenge for schools, then, is to be able to grow their student populations without necessarily investing in more manpower. The key to that challenge? The Internet.

ONLINE APPLICATIONS

Applying to college online is nothing new: For some time now, prospective students could get information and download applications from many schools. But, like many Internet-age innovations, online college application has moved into the realm of outsourcing through services such as those offered by the CollegeBoard, The Princeton Review, Wired Scholar, Apply4Admissions, Xap.com, and others. These organizations' sites enable college-bound students to complete forms only once. The applications can then be sent to multiple schools, eliminating a particularly tedious part of the application process. It's a popular system, but one that isn't without drawbacks for IHEs.

"So far, 44 percent of our freshman applicants have applied electronically using CollegeNET, compared with 30 percent last year. That's a 45 percent increase in a year," says Jones. "And because it relieves much of the data entry responsibilities here, the online service has really helped by allowing us to streamline the time frame in which applications are evaluated. On the other hand, we pay a percentage of each application fee to this company, so there is a loss of revenue there. That's something we hope to bring in-house."

CUSTOMIZED COMMUNICATION

Although outsourced college application sites have served many schools well, a new generation of Web-based applications has added considerable firepower to the marketing and communications tools that a university has at its disposal. Products such as iClass from ApplyYourself, edGenuiti's Student Suite, Connexxia's AdmissionsGenie, and ActiveAdmissions from LiquidMatrix help the Admissions office market directly to students in ways it never could before. And, in the best style of cyber-technology, the process is automated. Whether they exist on a school's own server (compatible with all popular enterprise systems such as PeopleSoft, SCT, and Oracle) or are transparently hosted by the vendor, these modular products offer far greater control over managing the admissions process from recruitment through enrollment. Here's how they work:

Prospect information is culled from various mailing lists or recruiting fairs, as well as from a student's initial visit to a school Web site. Alternately, a student might recommend the site to a friend. (Sites using AdmissionsGenie, for example, even offer the chance to win school-branded merchandise in exchange for submitting names.)

Then, when a prospect enters some personal information (e.g., intended study areas or extra-curricular activities) during her initial visit to a school's Web site, that data is used to "customize" the content she sees on return visits. All of the products feature the ability to send customized e-mails to prospective students automatically at scheduled times throughout the admissions process, reminding them of deadlines for forms, or providing updates of school activities in which they expressed interest. "It helps a school move from recruitment to yield," says Shawn Coyne, co-president of Connexxia. "The better informed the students, the better choices they'll make."

Gerri Koch, director of Admissions for Graduate Studies at Brandeis University, says ApplyYourself, launched at the school last fall, has become crucial to the school's marketing and recruitment process. "We've been extremely pleased with how we've been able to communicate with prospective students. We couldn't have done what we've done otherwise," she says.