7 Tips to Increase Your School’s Efficiency With an Online Admission System

Many educational institutions today have already adapted online admission systems. These systems enabled school administrators and students to experience a more convenient and faster admission process. And yes, to some degree, online admission systems improved the efficiency of the schools using them.

7 Tips to Increase Your School’s Efficiency With an Online Admission System

Back when you were still building your school, you might’ve not considered using an online admission system on your business plan. So if you’re thinking about increasing your school’s efficiency, now is the perfect time to start using one. So stick around for a few minutes. We’ll show you seven tips to increase your school’s efficiency with an online admission system.

Use Emails for Faster Inquiry Response

An inquiry is part of the admission process. Before students enroll in your school, most likely, they’ll inquire first. And, not just students, but also parents. If your school receives calls from students or parents for inquiries, that’s a sign that your admissions marketing plan is working. But, the question now is, will your school’s staff be able to respond to all inquiries promptly? Because if they can’t, then your school might lose the chance to obtain as many enrollees as it should accommodate. In other words, your student enrollment could go down.

So, to ensure that your staff can respond to every inquiry, make use of emails. Unlike calls, your staff can respond to emails in bulks. Most likely, the questions of every student and parent are your school’s standard quotation or tuition fee, courses, and facilities. In that case, your staff will just provide detailed information about your school, and send it via email to multiple recipients. As simple as that. The more inquiries your school can respond to, the more enrollees it could get for the school year.

Use the School’s Website

The best platform to establish an online admission system is none other than your school’s official website. It solidifies the credibility of your online admission process because it’s a verified site. On top of that, your school’s website makes the online admission process easier to find. Using other platforms or online tools that aren’t direct properties of your school will make your online admission seem illegitimate.

The contents of your online admission’s web pages shouldn’t be any different from the ones on paper. They should ask the same checklist of questions such as the student’s name, age, gender, address, grade level, parent’s name, etc. The only difference is that enrollees will have to input their entries using a keyboard, which is among the very reasons why online admission is faster compared to the traditional method.

However, you have to make sure that your admission process is simple. According to an assessment by University Business, complexity in the enrollment process is the number one complaint of enrollees and parents. Complexity can cause them to abandon the admission process, and that can affect a school’s enrollment rate badly. And also, an analysis from CollegeWeekLive implies that the biggest challenge that 55% of students encounter with school websites is navigating them. With those in mind, making your online admission system and your school’s website user-friendly is very important.

Make the Online Admission Accessible on Mobile

Nowadays, people spend more time using their smartphones than with their desktop computers or laptops. That said, you have to consider that students and parents will access your school’s online admission through their phones. So, make sure to make it compatible and accessible on mobile devices. And, not just the online admission web page, but the entire website of your private school should be accessible as well. Mobile compatibility and accessibility is a golden rule in developing websites today.

For this matter, it’s advisable to arrange a budget and offer a work proposal or contract to a web developer. Web developers know best how to make your website responsive to mobile devices. They usually conduct extensive testings before they can deem your site as mobile compatible.

Integrate Automation

Automation will have a direct impact on improving the efficiency of your school’s admission process. Each enrollment form that enrollees submit will no longer undergo manual reviews with automation. The system itself will assign classes to the enrollee based on their entries on the digital enrollment form. Compared to the manual method, automation will probably make the process ten times faster, or even more than that. But, you be the judge of that when your school utilizes automation.

Verify Enrollee Documents

In an online admission process, your school registrars and the enrollees won’t be meeting face to face. Because of that, it’s impossible to know whether the enrollee is indeed a student. Keep in mind that people can falsify things online easily. For that reason, your registrars must verify the enrollees’ submitted documents thoroughly. They have to check whether an enrollee’s identity and personal information exists in public records. Simply put, they need to do a complete background check. It’ll be a waste of classroom slots if your school accepts a false enrollee unknowingly, classroom slots that would’ve better served actual students.

Reinforce Security

Cyberthreats such as identity theft are always looming online. If your school’s online admission security is weak, the enrollee’s private data could be in jeopardy. Remember that part of every school agreement is the protection of the students’ records. So, if hackers can breach your website’s suboptimal security successfully, your school will be in hot water.

Before launching the online admission method of your school, make sure to reinforce the security measures of your website first. Yes, this will require you to gather slightly expensive funding. But, your school could lose more money in paying for damages caused by data privacy mishaps.

Send Enrollees’ Study Load Promptly

Once verified enrollees complete the online admission process, there should be no holdup. Send them a soft copy of their study load immediately. Inform them right away that they’re eligible to attend classes in your school soon. If your admission process has automation, it’ll inform enrollees automatically, via SMS or email, that they’re already official students of your school.

With an online admission system, your school’s efficiency will likely surpass expectations. Online processes are becoming a norm in the education industry, and your school shouldn’t be left behind. The use of online alternatives is actually among the marketing strategies of many schools, and it worked well for them. So, start integrating an online admission system for your school as soon as possible.

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