Under the Hood of Self-Reported Academic Records in Admissions Processing · 2015-09-16 · Under the Hood of Self-Reported Academic Records in Admissions Processing ... course type,

Under the Hood of Self-Reported

Academic Records in

Admissions Processing

By Thomas Skottene, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Wednesday, April 17, 9:15-10:15AM

Session ID 671

AACRAO San Francisco 2013 Session ID: 671

Session Rules of Etiquette

• Please turn off your cell phone/pager.

• If you must leave the session early, please do so as

discreetly as possible.

• Please avoid side conversations during the session.

• Please complete the session evaluation.

Thank you for your cooperation!


Agenda • What is Self-Reported Academic Record (SRAR)?

• How does the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign use it?

• What is involved?

• Functionally

• Resource-wise

• Technically

• Challenges

• Q&A

What is SRAR? And why would your institution consider it?


Does your Admissions Office deal with any

of these issues?

• Ever-increasing application numbers

• Especially international applications

• Difficulty matching paper documents

• Smaller staff

• Tighter budgets

• Higher QA standards

• Demands for better and more consistent review procedures

3/29/2013

Given these realities…

What do we do?

3/29/2013

Self-Reported Academic Record

(SRAR)

How does it work?


Step 1:

Applicants self-report their

academic history instead of

submitting transcripts.


Step 2:

We (the institutions) trust this

information during the application

phase.


Step 3:

If the applicant is admitted and

chooses to enroll, we require

official copies of their final

transcript(s) and check for

discrepancies.


Step 4:

If we find “relevant” discrepancies,

we rescind the offer.


How does this solve our problems?

• Benefits

• Operational

• Review

• Applicant


Operational Benefits

• Electronic form allows auto-matching of credentials.

• Login credentials are the same as for the application

• I.e. we know which “John Smith” it is

• Automation allows faster processing.

• Information as structured data (not text)

• Allows automated processing and calculations

• GPA

• Pattern

• Academic Index (when combined with other data sources)


Review Benefits • Consistent look and feel for all applicants, independent of school

• Allows toggles - view courses by sequence, course type, or grade

• Slice and dice

• Summary information of number of As, Bs, and …Fs

• Trends - are grades getting better over time?

• Compare against others - in the major, in the college, or from the same high

school

• Allows graphical representation

• Creating graphics manually would be way too labor intensive


Applicant Benefits

• Auto matching and automated processing allows application to go complete, in some cases, overnight - not weeks

• No need to request or pay for a transcript at the application phase

• No need to follow up with/“pester” overwhelmed high school administrators

• Knowing that your “transcript” looks the same as all others, i.e., all freshmen are reviewed consistently


Main Complaints • It is time-consuming - avg. 40 min, though some spend 90+ min

• Applicants enter their transcript data into our form

• Many applicants do not understand why we ask them to do this (or care)

• Some don’t understand what it is and/or what is required

• Fill it in incorrectly

• Still send transcripts

• Don’t fill it out at all

• In our case - not integrated in the application

• It is a separate form

• We plan to fix that for the coming cycle

How does the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign use the SRAR?

We did not invent it, and many schools use it

differently.


University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Some background

• Our technical landscape - where does the SRAR live?

• The user interfaces/screenshots - external and internal

• Calculations - matching, GPA, pattern

• Workflow - send back function

• Audit points

• Internal work copy vs. original submission

• Final transcript checking


Some Background • 2013 cycle

• 33,000+ applicants (close to 9,500 int’l)

• Expect 7,000 enrolled

• When we started using the SRAR

• 2011 cycle - all international students and a pilot Illinois high school

• 2012 and 2013 cycle - for all freshmen

• Do not use for transfer students (and do not plan to)


The Technical Landscape

• Banner – our university database

• Our ERP and final destination for application data

• Seamless integration with downstream processing like financial aid and student registration

• Banner currently provides our application web form

• eAdmit – our interface

• Homegrown admissions processing system

• Manages back-end processing of applications

• Hosts SRAR

• The application form and the SRAR form are currently separate


The Technical Landscape – Our Plan

• Banner – our university database

• Our ERP and final destination for application data

• Seamless integration with downstream processing like financial aid and student registration

• eAdmit – our interface

• Create our own ID management systems

• Create our own application form

• Homegrown admissions processing system

• Manages back-end processing of applications

• Hosts SRAR


3/29/2013

Banner

(Our ERP)

Online Web

Application

Form

eAdmitTM

Self-Reported

Academic RecordTM Login

Application data brought in every morning

Check login credentials against Banner

The Technical Landscape


ID management

Our Plan for

the Next Cycle

Banner

(Our ERP)

eAdmitTM

Application

(Integrated SRAR)

Banner data such as University ID

All application data

Just basic app data


The SRAR Form – What Does It Do?

• Collect data

• Course titles

• Grades

• Units

• Year

• Type

• Subject grouping

• Repeat course?

• Data entry simplification features


The SRAR Form - Simplified Example Subject

Grouping

Course Title Grade Units Year Type

Repeat

Math Advanced Algebra I A 1st semester 9th Year None No

English Creative Writing B- 2nd semester 10th Year Honor Yes

Science Chemistry C+ 1st trimester 11th Year AP No

Social

Science

Social Studies F All year

12th Year College Level No


The SRAR Form - Simplified Example Subject

Grouping

Course Title Grade Units Year Type

Repeat

Math Advanced Algebra I A 1st semester 9th Year None No

English Creative Writing B- 2nd semester 10th Year Honor Yes

Science Chemistry C+ 1st trimester 11th Year AP No

Social

Science

Social Studies F All year

12th Year College Level No

Allows for pattern automation

*Long term, we hope Illinois will standardize courses in a manner that we can fully automate based on course numbers.


The Actual SRAR Form

• Login

• Instructions

• Language (use for automatic pattern check)

• School and grading information

• A - F

• Other (if other, does your school provide a conversion to A-F?)

• Questions about gaps before graduation and after graduation

• 9-11 grades

• 12 year grades/schedule





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYFpzF7OWQY&hd=1

8,472 views and 33,000 apps

Hhmmmmmm…














3/29/2013



Back End – Table w/metadata


Back End – SRAR stored as XML


Why store as XML and not a table?

• Store all documents together in a document table without restricting

• Allow changes to the structure of the data without needing to make database changes

• I.e., we can add/update new columns

• Potentially share with other systems with different display specifications


Automated Processing Calculations

• No human needs to be involved to

• Match and update the checklist items and in some cases make the application complete

• Calculate a GPA of core courses

• Count APs and IBs

• Check pattern (Pass – Yes/No) - 4 years of English, 3 years of Math, etc.

• Handled 10% application increases annually without staff increase

• Positions not replaced when staff retire

• Significant reduction in phone calls asking “Do you have my transcript?”

• Allowed more detailed benchmarking and graphing


5

<

4/26/2012

Lowest ACT score

How many have a lower ACT score?

Above or below avg. and what the avg. is

How many have a higher ACT score?

How many have the same ACT score?

Highest ACT score


5


Send Back and Audit of Changes

• On occasion the applicant does not fill in the SRAR correctly, and we “un-submit” it and send it back to them - notified by email

• We also might make changes that only make sense internally, and we do not notify the applicant

• The applicant will not see what changes we made, and the changes are highlighted in the form

• Store a PDF of the original

• Keep audit points on who made the change and when


3/29/2013

Current

Original


Social Science vs. Other Not coding as Social Science caused the applicant to fail the auto-pattern check



Final Transcript Checking

• Once students have been admitted, we require them to send us their final transcript in the May-July timeframe.

• All students intending to enroll are checked for transcripts discrepancies:

• SRAR discrepancies

• Poor senior grades

• Graduation date

• Etc.



Final transcript

SRAR


Screen 1 SRAR

Screen 2 Final Transcript

What is involved?

What do we need to make this happen at our

institution?


Functional Considerations

• SRAR is a radical philosophical shift at most institutions.

• Do not underestimate the need for high-level institutional support and approvals.

• The SRAR is extremely detailed and is an integral part of the application.

• Up-front functional requirements may not be enough.

• University of Illinois had one trial year with limited user population

• One Illinois high school and all international applications

• Expect changes as functional users see the impact of their forms and instructions.


Tools and Programs

• Hosting

• MS SQL server VM

• .NET application server VM

• .NET v4.0

• MVC Famework and jQuery

• MS SQL Server Database

• SSIS for importing data and batch calculations

• SOAP web services for integration with ERP

• XML for documents

• Extensions such as PDF writer


Staffing • Functional staff

• Do not underestimate the value of functional staff participation in the development

process!

• Requirements, testing and feedback, and training for answering questions

• Analysts/Institutional Liaisons

• Staff who understand how the technology and functional requirements interact with

the rest of the University and downstream systems

• The SRAR is part of the applicant record if the student enrolls and must be archived.

What is the handoff?

• Programmers and report writers - 2 VB.NET programmers, 2 FTE report

writers (SQL, SAS)

Challenges What has been difficult?


Challenges

• Finding ways to make the process faster and less cumbersome for applicants

• Rescinds

• Applicants never filling in the SRAR

• Applicants filling in the SRAR incorrectly

• Some users do not have the equipment needed


Ideas for SRAR Improvements

• Provide a copy feature for a full semester/term instead of just class by class.

• Create a database with distinct course titles entered previously at that school and add suggestions as the applicant starts to type.

Advan

Advanced Algebra I

Advanced Algebra II

Advanced Algebra III


Rescinds

• We enroll about 7,000 freshmen students

• 297 total freshmen rescinds (4% of enrollment )

• 286 due to documentation not being submitted to verify SRAR (96% of rescinds)

• 224 with no housing/registration (78% of rescinds)

• 29 who had housing/registration

• 33 due to no final documentation submitted & not registered on 1st day of class

• 8 due to transcript discrepancy (0.1% of enrollment and 3% of rescinds)

• 3 due to poor senior year grades (0.04% of enrollment and 1% of rescinds)


Never Filling in the SRAR • A large number of applicants did not fill in their SRAR

at all and were denied for being incomplete.

• The SRAR was a separate form and not directly included in the

application

• The SRAR concept was unknown to the applicants

• Word had not gotten out

• Or, most likely…it was just a signal that they were no

longer interested.

• We have the same issue with test scores


Filling in the SRAR Incorrectly • Common problems:

• Labeling courses wrong and thus failing the auto-pattern check

• Allow for minor adjustments internally

• SRAR wasn’t filled in at all (or barely)

• Allow for staff to “un-submit” the SRAR and give it back to the applicant (notify by

email)

• No senior courses (weren’t graded yet so applicants would leave them off )

• Created a “courses in progress” section in the SRAR from

• No senior spring courses (since last semester courses aren’t “in progress,”

applicants would leave them off )

• Plan to allow courses to be “scheduled” as well as “in progress”


Lacking Infrastructure

• Some users and schools do not have equipment that can handle the SRAR form (though the requirements are minimal).

• Old browsers, old PCs/Macs, bad Internet connections

• Our counselors would arrange application workshops and bring in laptops.

• In the future we have also considered bringing cell phone hot-spots to ensure a good Internet connection.


Summary • What is Self-Reported Academic Record (SRAR)?

• How does the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

use it?

• What is involved?

• Functionally

• Resource-wise

• Technically

• Challenges


Questions?


Thank You! Thomas Skottene

[email protected]

Please complete the session evaluation form using the AACRAO Mobile App or the paper form provided in

your conference bag.

Session ID 671

Documents

Under the Hood of Self-Reported Academic Records in Admissions Processing · 2015-09-16 · Under the Hood of Self-Reported Academic Records in Admissions Processing ... course type,