University Business - August 2008 - (Page 37)

Cheryl Fabrizi uses online tools to track website traffic and ensure the right audience is getting Binghamton U’s message. Streamlining Admissions: Opening the Front Door When the admissions ofﬁce runs smoothly, both students and staff beneﬁt. Here are 10 ways to get there. By Ann McClure HE ADMISSIONS OFFICE IS THE FIRST STOP for any student entering a higher education institution. A smooth process can not only instill confidence and reassure students they made the correct choice, but it also can make the lives of staff members better as well. Consider implementing some or all of the following 10 tips for smoothing out bumps all along the admissions road. 1. Build a One-Stop Shop. IHEs are still discovering the value of this solution. Administrators at Widener University (Pa.) decided to build one after a student survey showed dissatisfaction with service from the registrar’s, financial aid, and bursar’s offices. The one-stop office’s location, in a former Oldsmobile dealership, was not big enough to include the admissions staff, but the workflow processes do, says Larry Lesick, associate vice president for enrollment management. One big change—notifying students about incorrect information on the ISIR (institutional student information record) generated from the FASFA—has gone from taking 27 days to six hours. Another effort, no longer requiring essays with applications, reduced the reading time from 27 minutes to two minutes. And complaints about universitybusiness.com T the three offices funneled through the president’s office during the first two weeks of the term dropped 95 percent the first fall the center was open (in 2006). Lesick says the goal now is to get as many transactions as possible online. “We want to be a no-stop shop.” 2. Automate Scholarship-Endowment Matching. The process of matching student recipients to endowed scholarships used to be a manual, two-month process at Ohio Wesleyan University. In the spring, students would be sent a letter saying they had received an “Ohio Wesleyan Grant,” and then the staff would check the criteria for all 200 endowed scholarships and in the fall send a new letter with the scholarship name. Students frequently thought they were receiving additional funds, explains Lee Harrell, assistant vice president of admission and financial aid, and because of the delay between receiving the funds and receiving the notice, they had no motivation to send thank you letters to donors. A student intern and an IT staff member built a comprehensive database of all the scholarships with qualification criteria and a program to automatically match and rank students to the funds. This spring students received a letter that already included the endowment name. “We anticipate our workload in the fall will be eliminated,” August 2008 | 37 http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - August 2008

University Business - August 2008
Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Behind the News
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
On the Hill
Future Shock
Independent Outlook
Community Colleges
Dorms of Distinction
Streamlining Admissions: Opening the Front Door
E-mail, Gmail, and Beyond
EduComm Deals a Winning Hand
What's New
End Note

University Business - August 2008