Whether you are a college, university, school, or edutech, your primary motive is to get more enrollments. However, with 40 Million students graduating YOY according to AISHE by MHRD, generating enough student inquiries is not an issue. Converting casual inquiries into admissions is what is more of a challenge. So, today, we will talk about how an admission management system can help you streamline your admission process and boost your student inquiry to admission ratio.
What is an admission management system?
The admission management system is a digital tool that helps educational institutions manage the student enrollment process effortlessly. It lets admission teams capture student inquiries, check their eligibility, follow-up, collect documents, and complete the application process digitally. The online admission system also allows students to apply online, check their application status, submit documents and pay fees online.
Needless to say that the admission cycle is long and cumbersome. From student inquiry generation, document collection, selection, and admissions – everything involves a lot of paperwork. Digital solutions for college admission management such as applicant and self-serve application portals make the admission process easy.
Think of your student inquiries as vehicles and your admission process as a toll booth. As long as there are only a few vehicles, it is manageable. Once the vehicles start coming from multiple directions, the next thing you notice is a traffic jam. Before you know it, there is a delay in the movement due to congestion. Although it might not impact the toll booth as much as it would your educational business. Why?
According to AISHE, there are 55,096+ private colleges, standalone institutes, and research institutions in India. And students also apply at multiple institutions to secure their education. Therefore, institutions must play smart to fetch the right talent for their courses. An admission management system streamlines the entire process from student inquiry to conversion.
Why do You Need an Online Admission System?
You should consider a college admission management software if you face the following challenges:
- Low inquiry-to-admission ratio
- Inefficient student inquiry capture, tracking, and management in real-time, leading to leakages
- No system in place to capture student drop-off rates
- Counselors are using excel sheets to manage the entire admission process – leading to confusions and further leakage
Even if you find these issues unrelated, these are the critical areas that need improvement to boost your admission rates.
The following are the benefits of an admission management system.
How can admission management system help?
1. Capture student inquiries from multiple sources
Gone are the days where you would generate inquiries only through referrals and traditional ads. Today, leads can pour in through social media, websites, offline ads, channel partners, or publisher integrations. Not having an efficient system in place translates to missed inquiries. But with the help of a college admission management system, you would be able to capture all leads with 0 leakages.
2. Track application status
In general, an admission form consists of various sections and subsections, which are difficult to fill in one go. Often, students leave the site before completing the application form. So, to make it easier for them, ensure that the online application process is simple.
The applicants should be able to apply online, pay the fee, and check their status online. They should also be able to scan and upload documents on the go. In case they drop off for any reason, they may resume the application anytime they want to.
An online admission system increases the resolution rate. Hence, applicants can see the status of their application in real-time.
3. Track student journey
A common misconception is that the student journey starts after they enroll in your institution. But, the journey begins from the time a student inquires for admission. Assisting the applicant from the very beginning will show that you care about them and you can do this easily by utilizing relevant touchpoints.
An online student admission system provides a consolidated view of the applicant’s interaction history since their first interaction. Additionally, admission counselors can see the application status, drop-offs, activities of the student on the website, email opens, link clicks, tickets raised, pending queries, solved queries, etc. With a college admission management software, counselors can have a full context of the student activities and engage with applicants with a personal touch.
4. Student and counselor portals
An efficient student management system makes the enrollment process easier for the students and counselors. With paperless applicant portals, you can make the admission journey easy for students. A student-friendly form will always have a higher completion rate. With the help of a student portal, applicants can:
- Fill the admission form at their convenience
- Select a course of their choice
- Schedule screening exams and interviews
- Pay the application fee
- Book virtual, physical campus tours, and continuously engage with counselors with the help of a dashboard.
LeadSquared changed the entire experience for students that applied here. I would recommend if an institution were to level up its admissions game, then this Online Admissions System would be a definite investment to look into.
Rohit Rana, Vice Chair, St Andrews University
Similarly, admission counselors can automate important admission notifications. They can have all their scheduled and overdue tasks in one place. In other words, they would have a complete overview of their applicant’s journey and engage with them at the right time. Counselors can set reminders and alerts to notify them about incomplete applications. Hence, they reduce the response time, which is the primary reason for a lower inquiry-to-admission ratio. They also have access to documents online and save countless hours by decreasing paperwork.
A college management software like LeadSquared has helped student counsellors 2X their efficiency by taking 75-100 calls as opposed to 30-40 calls before the software.
Sanjay Dhinghra, Co-founder & Director, Seed Global Education
5. Automate the selection process
With the help of a college admission management system, you can connect all processes and teams. You can build an admission workflow and map student journeys, for example, inquiries, applications, counseling, enrollment, etc., with the relevant department. As soon as the student takes a crucial step, the online admission management system assigns student inquiries to counselors automatically. You can also define the distribution rules based on your needs. For example, if you have multiple campuses, you can distribute inquiries to counselors based on location.
6. Prioritize responses
With a large volume of student inquiries coming in, who do you reach out to first? A dynamic college admission management software assigns scores to the applicants based on their actions, such as email opens, link clicked, and website activities. You can also take eligibility into account. For instance, prioritize communication with students who scored more than 80% marks in their school. Thus, based on the score, your counselors can focus on the important inquiries first.
7. Advanced analytics
The only way to improve your admission rates is to draw insights into your admissions team’s KPIs. The customizable dashboard allows you to track the marketing team’s performance in addition to sources, campaigns, admissions teams (online and offline teams), counselors, call center agents, and more.
With reliable analytics, you can redefine your strategies and invest more in profitable sources. Imagine spending X amount of money on social media advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You observe that most qualified leads are coming from Facebook. You also see that you are not getting enough student leads from Instagram and LinkedIn. So, instead of relying on these two sources, you can invest more in Facebook that’s getting you the best application conversion rates.
In short, an admission management system can help you generate payment milestone reports, phone call metrics, student admission stage transition analysis, and complete reporting for all your processes, teams, courses, and campaigns. You can also draw the performance reports across campuses and devise strategies to improve admission rates.
The following are the education KPIs and metrics delivered by an online admission system:
- Daily calls made by counselors
- Email open and clickthrough rates and the best time for sending emails
- Region-wise percentage of student conversion achieved per admission counselor/program associate/consultant
- Call to conversion ratio.
- Admissions per employee
- Hourly, weekly, monthly performance reports
- Sources of qualified leads (Social Media, Publisher panel, etc.)
- Pan India and location wise team performance
- Performance of lead generation sources, admission counselors, teams, and marketing campaigns
- Team performance
- Product (subjects, courses) performance
- Campaign source performance
- Agents performance
- Return on Advertisements (ROAs)
[Also read: 5 handy tips for admission officers]
To Summarize,
India currently has 200 million school-going students, and 36.6 million students graduate YOY. It has the 3rd largest higher education sector globally. Thus, there is no dearth of students seeking admission to academic institutions. But, student inquiry inflow is causing tremendous pressure on admission teams. Irregular follow-ups and missing out on inquiries have strengthened the need for a digitized approach toward admissions. In short, a student admission system helps automate and streamline end-to-end admission operations. Thus, providing complete transparency to the students as well as the administration.
If you plan on boosting your inquiry to admission ratio, do check out LeadSquared. We would be happy to streamline your admission process for you!
LeadSquareds’ College Admissions Management Software has helped fine-tune the enrollment process at RIT like a machine, which is synchronized with our daily activities. As a result of which our online admissions system has increased our enrollment by 60%. Record-keeping and tracking have become more swift and systematic. Thus, LeadSquared has been of great advantage for us in these recent years
Amod Krishna, Dean at Roorkee Institute of Technology
FAQs
An admission management system is a digital solution to manage student enrollments in colleges, universities, and training institutions. Educational institutions use Education CRM to distribute inquiries to counselors/admission teams, follow-up with leads, and complete the enrollment process digitally.
An online admission system lets the student apply for a course online, submit mark sheets/documents, and check their application status. On the other hand, it allows the institutions to track the applicants, follow-up with them, schedule counseling sessions, accept digital documents, check eligibility, and accept/reject the application.
The benefits of an intelligent college admission management software enable your admission teams to reduce manual intervention, become more efficient, and track applicants online. It is most useful in terms of prioritizing student inquiries and tracking student activities to ensure higher enrollment rates.
