NC State University Efficiently Manages Over 35,000 Applications Using AdmissionPros

NC State University receives over 35,000 applications per year to attend their prestigious university. They needed an admissions software platform that could help them in 5 key areas:

1. Review admission decisions before release
2. Provide different application processing for a specific student group
3. Provide a software platform that would evolve with their university and decrease the need for state funding
4. Implement a spring admissions program
5. Determine which prospect purchases are most effective

While several popular CRM options were considered, AdmissionPros was selected because the company is made up admissions professionals, and they have the ability to meet the university's objectives. 

Let's look at each key area.

1. Review admission decisions before release

With over 35,000 applicants, an efficient quality-assurance check needed to be established in the decision process before releasing.

We created an audit system that allowed all decisions to be reviewed prior to them being released. The audit system was easy to use and worked seamlessly with our application portal and letter printing. This allowed them to be able to sort all decisions much more efficiently based on custom criteria, which also allowed them to find and check outliers.

2. Provide different application processing for a specific student group

Since NC States international applicants have increased over 200% in the last 10 years, a new system was needed to implement additional steps in the application process.

We collaborated with department staff to develop different applicant completion requirements for international students. Additional routing processes and application reading flows were developed to enable the staff to make critical decisions quickly.

3. Provide a software platform that would evolve with their university and decrease the need for state funding

Since implementing the AdmissionPros software platform, the university has been able to handle and process effectively an increase of approximately 33% in applications over the last 5 years. 

This has resulted in a decrease in state funding for their office. Even with a 12% increase in fall freshman applications for 2018, they were able to exceed all their freshman admission targets even though they had several open staff positions.

4. Implement a spring admissions program

With an increasing number of December graduates and a large number of fall applicants, in order to help level enrollment, they needed a way to defer a number fall applicants to spring. 

The decision to make the spring offers was made in mid-February with decisions to go out at the end of March.  Even with this small window of time, we worked with their staff to make it work, and they exceeded their spring enrollment target by 200 students.

5. Determine which prospect purchases are most effective

With the ability to track students throughout the entire enrollment process, they were able to utilize the data reporting tools to effectively analyze their prospects sources. Their return on investment was easily identified so that they could make informed decisions for future purchases. 

As we have detailed above, a complete admissions solution was needed to improve several key areas of their admissions process. 

We were able to work closely with their departmental staff to design a specific solution for all their key areas to improve efficiency and productivity, without the need for additional resources.

This would not have been possible with an "Out of the Box" admissions CRM.