Online Admission Forms

[sefton]

I've been thinking of transitioning one of our schools away from paper to online admission forms, mainly because we have a large migratory population and with a large turnover paper forms have a habit of going missing. Does anybody use such a system, could something like Microsoft Forms manage it?

[supportman]

We don't use this ourselves but I heard it works with both Sims and Bromcom

 

https://applicaa.com/admissions-plus

[sefton]

The chances of us getting any budget is somewhere close to 0, unfortunately.

[CyBeRkId2002]

Funnily enough I am currently investigating digitising ours. I spent around a day converting our Paper based admissions form to an online form using LimeSurvey. It is going to SLT soon but it seems to solve the issue of having lots of paper-based form lying around, gathering them in, reading handwriting, data-entry mistakes etc.

 

At present though it will still be a mainly manual data entry process into our MIS but I cannot see a way around this.

[AJWhite1970]

Application forms for y7 and y12 use Google Forms. Once a student is pre-enrolled we setup the p1 in SIMS with the bare bones info, name, student, email and then send them a username in TASC Insight where they complete everything else electronically using their pre-enrolment module.

 

Did it for 160 new 7’s last summer, worked perfectly

[CHiLL]

We've used Applicaa for the past couple of years and it really has made the process easier. It's not just us that appreciate it, but the office staff love it too because it saves them so much time.

 

Our process now;

Import student details into MIS (ATF files, etc from primary schools)

Pre-create accounts in Applicaa for parents to use

Arrange a day/evning for parents to come in to complete the application

Log on the computers and have the login screen of the website ready for parents

Hand out the login details as they arrive

Parents log in with their pre-created accounts and complete the application form

Once form is complete, they let us know and we print it from the admin section of the Applicaa website

Parents double check the printed form and go back onto the website to correct any incorrect information

Parents sign the printed application form to confirm that the details are correct (and we then have our required paper copy for record)

 

Applicca was mainly used in colleges and we encountered a few issues in the first year with missing fields that SIMS needs, etc. Applicaa were really good in sorting all that out and it worked great last year, as well as for in-year admissions.

 

For me, Applicaa is like SalamanderAD; it's well worth the money for the time and work it saves.

[CyBeRkId2002]

Hi CHiLL.. quick question - what is the write-back process to the MIS? Is it a manual export, cross-reference, update exercise? Guessing not and it just has write-back access to the MIS once approved?

[CHiLL]

Hi CHiLL.. quick question - what is the write-back process to the MIS? Is it a manual export, cross-reference, update exercise? Guessing not and it just has write-back access to the MIS once approved?

Up until last year it wasn't automatic, so once applications were completed we exported the CTF files from the Applicaa website and import those into SIMS. However I believe they've now released a new tool which automates this process, though we haven't used it yet.

[Optimus_Primal]

We use Applicaa for the 6th form, we have around 400 applicants for 200 Year 12 spaces and it has massively improved the process for the admissions person. However they still insist on printing out the application form for interviews!

[DrCheese]

How much are you folks paying for Applicca?

[Ditto]

We used Google forms for admissions. We collected a lot of data via Google Forms - all very painless and cost free apart from setup and processing time. I'm certain MS Forms could be used in a very similar way. A little more advanced, we even did admission ranking in a Google Sheet. We had some fairly complex GScripting in place as we had some complex admissions criteria, but it was all achievable - probably no more complex than some mid-advanced level Excel skills. Back-up paper entry was support for the those parents who would not use online, but they were few and far between. We had one parent refuse to use a Google form for reserving place at a school show due to his personal distrust of what Google did with data. He was invited in to complete paperwork and then we'd enter this manually to process.

[sefton]

Thanks everybody for their feedback, having looked more closely I don’t think Microsoft Forms can perform the task, which is a real pity as with Windows 10 now our O365 integration is excellent. I’ll have a look at Google Forms as an alternative.

[Ditto]

Thanks everybody for their feedback, having looked more closely I don’t think Microsoft Forms can perform the task, which is a real pity as with Windows 10 now our O365 integration is excellent. I’ll have a look at Google Forms as an alternative.

Out of interest, what is MS Forms lacking that leads to that conclusion. I'm more experienced with Google Forms than MS, and know there are a number of add-on products for Google Forms, but my current environment is MS only, so interested to understand.

[coolhands]

I wanted to use applicaa and it all looks good, but our finance guy turned it down as it wasn't in the budget. So will spend more on postage and admin staff entering contact details of parents dire handwriting!