Automate Student Admissions—Free Up Time and Resources

If you work on an admissions team or collaborate with those who do, you know how many plates are spinning at one time. From building student relationships, to answering personalized questions about enrollment, to dishing out acceptance packages, it can be a lot for admissions counselors to manage individually.

Fortunately, the modern world of admissions is going digital—and automatic. In a recent survey, Inside Higher Ed points out the effectiveness of digital admissions touchpoints when it comes to working with prospective students and getting them to enroll. But there’s only so much time in a day, which forces educational institutions to use resources productively, leveraging technology (including CRM platforms) to its ultimate potential. 

If you’ve been on the hunt for ways to improve and accelerate your admissions process, automation could be the missing link. 

In this post, we’ll break down the context of automation in higher education admissions, including when, where, and how you can use it to your advantage. 

When it comes to improving the admissions steps for your college or university, looking at both sides of the coin truly matters. Improvements need to be available (and realistic) for both student applicants and the staff members who are in charge of navigating the process from start to finish.

In many cases, enhancing the admissions funnel includes making the following changes.

In a higher education admission context, digitalization looks like migrating most of the inquiry, intake, and application processes over to comprehensive digital steps. 

For most contemporary education institutions, the switch from paper forms and manual data entry to digital has already taken place, but there may be some straggling steps (like lead intake at physical recruitment fairs) that still linger on paper. Switching to fully digital methods increases data privacy for students and makes each step faster and more responsive.

Personalization involves delivering targeted messages to the right students and the right times. Instead of mass communication (which may not be as effective), a personalized approach looks for ways to enhance each student’s experiences and expectations. Personalized communication often happens in standard marketing channels like social media, email messaging, and SMS, but it might also change once a student agrees to attend.

Get a holistic view of prospects and students, allowing for data-driven decision-making and tailored outreach efforts with the only CRM made specifically for higher ed.

Automation puts several processes on autopilot without requiring as much human intervention to make things happen. A basic example would be delivering an automated confirmation message when a prospective student requests information about an academic program via the website.

Opportunities for Automation Within Existing Admissions Steps

Your admissions toolset might be in decent shape, but what can you do to make it even better? 

Automation eliminates the manual grunt work so that staff members can focus on what truly matters—helping students along the journey.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to incorporate automation into how you interact with new and prospective students. It comes down to having an overarching automation strategy and focusing on how each new change benefits students.

Automated inquiry response is one of the primary (and most straightforward) ways to incorporate automation into your first set of student touchpoints. This is because you can quickly build user-friendly intake forms, embed them on existing landing or web pages, and collect data from prospects. 

After students submit information, ensure that it goes seamlessly into your student engagement CRM. Follow-up with an automated confirmation or the content they requested.

If the inquiry process involves an individual response (like from an admissions counselor or recruitment officer), make sure that workflows are set up to staff members when a student is expecting further outreach. Missing a step here could sacrifice the student’s first opinions and risk losing their enrollment down the line.

Application Forms for Prospective Students

Contemporary application processes aren’t what they used to be, even as recently as five to ten years ago. That’s because many schools have migrated to common applications (which students can submit to many schools at once for review within a broad network). This automation is great for students, helping them save time on repetitive information, document sharing, and test score or writing uploads.

Colleges and universities must create automated steps to keep pace in a digital world where new students apply to multiple schools at once. Admissions decisions and responses should still feel personal, accurate, and attentive to the student’s needs.

Additionally, many schools have turned to a direct response admission process to further speed up the application status for students. Direct admissions give students on-the-spot decisions about their admissions offers at particular schools, eliminating many of the “middle-person” steps that take place halfway through the process. Plus, direct response options can offer many perks, some to under-represented student groups.

This type of response often benefits underprivileged student groups.

A direct response can also reach and convert high-priority students more quickly, eliminating the risk of losing those students to other institutions.

The direct method reduces the enrollment gap between high school and college, allowing institutions to boost their enrollment numbers more adequately.

Many students turn to this process to avoid a steep application fee per school.

Automated reminders and messages are also extremely helpful to eligible students as they navigate a major life change after high school graduation. Consider using your CRM software or student engagement platform to keep students in the know when it comes to important events, dates, enrollment requirements, and deadlines. 

The benefit of automating your reminders process is two-fold. First, it helps keep students moving through the admissions funnel without unnecessary delays and bottlenecks. Next, it also helps admissions team members avoid chasing down students for common (and easy) steps along the path to enrollment. 

We’ve rounded up remedies to six of the challenges our partner schools experience most and the actionable tips you need to overcome them.

Top 6 Recruiting Challenges — and How to Beat Them

Although the official class registration process comes after a student is admitted, newly enrolled students often require some help and guidance as they make those first general education picks. Email or text automated reminders as class registration gets closer, and automatically share student data with academic advisors or enrollment officers who can better assist with class selection.

The point of automation at this phase is to remove friction points in the new student journey. When a future student feels confused, frustrated, and left behind, these sentiments can shape how they feel about their campus experience—and even about retention or persistence. 

Of course, responsible (and ethical) student data collection happens before, during, and after the admissions cycle. But just because it’s common doesn’t mean that every school has a fine-tuned and user-friendly process. 

A reliable and secure data-sharing and onboarding process can help students feel 63% more connected to their chosen university. As a result, asking students for data should always feel simple and stress-free. Your admission teams can achieve this by:

Eliminating repetitive or redundant data-gathering steps (for instance, don’t ask students to enter their names in a form field once you’ve already been communicating with them for months)

Reassuring students that their personal information will be used responsibly

Building automated workflows that transfer student information between the right staff members without skipping or missing important steps

While data collection is the backbone of your online admissions, it shouldn’t feel like a major hassle. Incorporating secure automation strategies can alleviate frustration while keeping student data safe and secure.

Accelerate Admissions Now with Element451

At Element451, we know how to help you connect with students in ways that are engaging, purposeful, and well-connected. That means improving the way you market to learners, help families through the admissions lifecycle, and enroll new students.

Now is the time to make your admissions processes even easier. As the higher education market heats up in terms of competition, help your school stand out from the rest. With user-friendly features, engaging AI tools, and a student-centric approach, Element451 is the admissions CRM you need if you want to grow and scale.

Let’s start reframing your entire admissions process—and help thousands of students along the way. 

How to Automate Student Admissions Processes

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