News & Events
February 12, 2003
New Students Admit Themselves to UBC Over the Internet
By Krista Charbonneau, Editor, e-Strategy Update Newsletter
Imagine that you are in your last year of high school, applying to university for the first time. It’s mid-December and you have just received your report card. When you get home from school, you decide you want to know if your grades are high enough to be accepted at the University of British Columbia.
So, you go online and log in to UBC’s Web site and go to Web Self-Admission. You click on the ‘Self-Evaluate’ button and enter information about your grades and courses over the Web. It tells you right away that you meet the criteria for your program. You know what you want to do when you graduate, so you click the ‘Admit Me’ button and, within minutes, you’ve been accepted to your chosen program. You walk into the kitchen and announce:
“Guess what, Mom & Dad! I just admitted myself to UBC over the Internet!”
This scenario isn’t a vision of the distant future – it’s already happening. UBC launched its new Web Self-Admission service in December, 2002 and radically changed the admission process to make admission simple, fast and easy for qualified students.
Web Self-Admission is a software application that makes it possible for incoming students to find out if they meet admission requirements and admit themselves to UBC over the Web. Students enter information about their high school courses and grades in the Self-Evaluation component of the application to find out if they meet the program requirements. If they are eligible, they can click the ‘Admit Me’ button and admit themselves to the university.
Web Self-Admission is the first of its kind in Canada and possibly in North America. This Web-based application was developed by the Student Systems team in Enrolment Services at UBC, with strong support from VP Students, Brian Sullivan. It is radically changing the way UBC evaluates and admits new, undergraduate students. And it’s giving students the ability to make one of the most important decisions of their lives on their own terms.
“This application illustrates the strengths of online service provisions,” said Richard Spencer, Executive Director of e-Business at UBC. “Students can enter their own data, and they only have to do it once. It gives students an immediate answer & it saves staff time so they can do more valuable work.”
Although it’s only a few months old, Web Self-Admission is already improving the admissions process for students, staff and the university as a whole. So far, 1,200 high school students from across British Columbia have admitted themselves to UBC over the Internet. By mid-January, 3,000 students used the Self-Evaluation component of the Web Self-Admission software application.
UBC is now able to make more offers to top students earlier in the year. Offering this high level of service to prospective students makes the university more competitive. In previous years, using the paper-based system, less than 300 early offers of admission were made in total, and UBC was not able to make any early offers before the end of February.
Moving the former paper-based admissions process to the Web will also have an impact on staff in the Admissions Office. The new system means that staff will spend less time processing individual applications. They’ll also spend less time answering calls and emails from students asking about the status of their applications.
Now staff will take on new roles in the admissions process, adding value to student services in different ways. They will be able to spend more time consulting with students about how their admission choices may affect their program and career opportunities. They will have more time to offer better, more personalized service to students.
Additional features will be added to Web Self-Admission over the next year. The service is currently only available to high school students from B.C.. Students also have to apply to UBC before they can access the Self-Evaluation component. Next year, B.C. college transfer students and applicants from other provinces and countries will also be able to admit themselves over the Web.
The Self-Evaluation component will soon be available to anyone, whether they apply to UBC or not. This will allow younger students to explore possibilities with hypothetical courses and marks. Students will be able to find out what requirements they’ll need for all the programs offered at UBC and plan ahead. And they can do it themselves, quickly and simply, without having to ask a school counselor to explain it to them.
The Web Self-Admission software application is one of the e-Business projects that are making UBC’s e-Strategy vision a reality. It is a key example of how UBC is integrating technology with administrative processes to improve services for students and staff.
“This application is central to e-Strategy,” said Spencer. “It’s about trusting people, which this does. It applies complex rules in real time. It replaces manual approvals with applying rules online. It makes real time decisions for both students and staff.”
The Self-Admission tool is an Enrollment Services initiative and was made possible with the support of Brian Sullivan, VP Students. The online application was developed by the Student Systems Team.
For more information, contact Richard Spencer.
More information:
About UBC's e-Strategy
UBC's e-Strategy enables students, faculty and staff to excel in one of the world's leading universities by enhancing learning, research and community through leading-edge technology initiatives.
e-Strategy is a guiding framework to align UBC's technology initiatives with the university's strategic goals. Activities include project development, information and resource sharing, and setting long terms goals for technology at UBC.
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