Admissions Process Rethink
Admissions Operations processes applications for many different student types. One particular student type, Domestic International students, have unique requirements. These students have a United States residency status and have taken coursework in another country. Currently the process requires these students to submit international documents to a third party evaluator. While the process is efficient, the cost and confusion in the process has prompted the Office of Admissions to explore the possibility of completing evaluations for international documents internally.
ROLES: UX Researcher, Task Manager
PROBLEM EXPLORATION
DOMESTIC ADMISSIONS PAIN POINTS
Current Domestic Admissions process is manual and allows for students to ‘get lost’ in the process
Not easy to follow up with students who have not completed the process because student sends documents directly to the third party evaluator
The process is complicated and difficult for student's to understand
Current relationship with third party application evaluator is costly
Difficult to track student documents and determine completion of student's application
INTERNATIONAL ADMISSIONS PAIN POINTS
Multiple systems used and systems do not communicate together
International processes must be followed to ensure document validity
Difficult to discern which office the student should contact because complex questions must be asked to determine the correct student type
International Admission Process varies greatly from Domestic International Student Process and communicating these processes to students can be challenging.
RESEARCHED BOTH PROCESSES
RESEARCHED BOTH PROCESSES
DOCUMENTED AND MAPPED THE RELATIONSHIP
To build a new workflow, researched both Domestic and International processes and identified intersection points. By mapping out each process and connecting them, we were able to discover gaps that needed to be addressed before we could progress.
USED PROCESS MAP TO BEGIN BUILDING NEW AUTOMATED WORKFLOW
Once a map of the overall Domestic International Student workflow was created, meetings were conducted to determine how new workflows could be built to reflect this process.
BUILDING THE QUEUES
USED EXISTING WORKFLOW QUEUE AND REWORKED FOR NEW QUEUE
We used an existing Domestic Admissions workflow queue to assess where gaps existed in the process. We were able to identify new queues that we could create to make the process work for both Domestic Admissions and the Office of International Affairs.