How can schools improve the admission process for students post COVID?

Students have had it rough. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging in the past 2 years, they dealt with the unknowns of going through college online for the first time. Unfortunately, they also did not experience any of the good things about going to campus life.

Schools have not had it easy either. At this time of writing, schools and universities are now preparing to ease students back to the campus. However, with mask mandates in force and social distancing protocols still in effect, faculty and administration find it hard to cope with the volumes of requests that have come flooding in. From financial aid queries, locating student resources, and school onboarding, faculty and staff spend a considerable part of the day dealing with the volume of inquiries.

In such times, automating critical aspects of your student workflows is a crucial enabler to empower your school administration. Hyperautomation, a technology that combines artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic process automation (RPA), can revolutionize the way schools and universities manage their operations.

Student Applications and Admissions

The application and admission season is a long and time-consuming process for administration staff. The school or university intake process may or may not be seamlessly connected to your evaluation system. Once the evaluations are complete, university staff have to issue admits to successful applicants and send out response letters to all applicants. If all these different systems are not stitched together, admin staff usually spend a lot of time and resources to get a coherent student experience together.

Hyperautomation solutions like the A8Studio platform combine AI, ML, and RPA to create a seamless application workflow that can provide a single pane of glass experience to your applicants, across all the stages of the application process, from intake to evaluation, to additional documentation, all the way to the final response. With A8Studio’s hyperautomation capabilities, your applicants would never be kept in the dark about their application status, with A8Chat providing your university staff with the ability to stay connected with your applicants on whichever channel they prefer, i.e., web, mobile, or even WhatsApp.

Student Registration and Financial Aid (FAFSA)

Once the initial application process is finalized and approved, then the real struggle for students begins. University tuition fees are a substantial component of college expenses, which compels students to start looking for financial aid early in the process. The process to avail of FAFSA, i.e., Federal Student Aid or any other loan or grant, could be overwhelming for any new student. It also depends on the awareness levels of the student, and International students usually end learning about all their options a little too late in their process and end up missing opportunities to avail aid from the start of their tenure.

Again, hyperautomation solutions like the A8Studio platform can fully empower your faculty and staff to assist students in their time of need. Using A8Chat to inform students of the eligibility and timeline requirements and tying it back with A8Flow to grant workflows allows your university or college to easily make financial aid options available to all students.

Course Recommendation and Transfers

Students go through multiple courses in their college stint, but choosing their course to accrue learning credits is a process they usually fine-tune over several conversations with their counselor and professor. Coupled with the fact that so many new avenues have opened up in recent years as relevant career paths, students spend more time in analysis paralysis to decide which courses will set them up for success in their learning journey.

Hyperautomation solutions like A8iQ could learn from course recommendation patterns provided by faculty and staff and ease the process of reviewing and selecting an optimal learning path for students. These insights surfaced through A8Chat could reduce student anxiety while allowing professors to spend more time interacting and guiding the students through these chosen paths.

Graduation and Alumni Relations

Many universities may have aspirations to stay connected to students through graduation and beyond with alumni relations and programs. But these aspirations are usually translated into email newsletters, which may not be the most compelling form of engagement. A8Chat could engage with graduates and the alma mater in any communication channel of choice, allowing university admins to reach out to alumni to engage in real-time interactions. For college recruitment, fundraising, and alumni programs, A8Chat coupled with A8iQ can provide your university the soapbox it needs to talk about its activities to its latent audience and analyze if outreach efforts are working well in a tangible fashion.

A8Studio: Give Your Faculty and Admin Super Powers

These possibilities are a tiny peek into what the A8Studio platform, powered by hyperautomation, unlocks for your institution to welcome, interact, and stay engaged with your students throughout their lifecycle. Schedule a demo with us today to find out how Autonom8 can give your faculty and staff the firepower they need in this back-to-school season.