5 Challenges College Admissions Teams are Facing and how to Solve Them

"It's a rat race, and you need to study and work hard to succeed" is a statement that parents often say to their pupils. Despite sounding like an ominous warning, it is not meant to instill fear or intimidate them; instead, it is the parents’ attempt to indicate the reality of the situation. Moreover, students accurately understand the competition that pits them against one another in an academic system to be their best.

No wonder they give it their all to achieve excellence at the higher education level; however, they face tremendous obstacles during their college years. In fact, few of the most recurring issues occur during this period, and the institutes equally struggle to help alleviate them. Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that both parties face equal pressure during college admission, and for years, institutes have tried to moderate the process.

Even with this, college administrators still run into several problems that make it difficult to carry out a well-organized student enrollment procedure. Therefore, let us take a look at some of the challenges they face and solutions that can help overcome them:

1. Inadequate Online Admission System

What is the best thing about the current admission system? First, most colleges have opted for a radical shift and embraced technology to streamline most manually intensive activities. Hence, they facilitate an online admission system, enabling students to sign up for colleges and remotely initiate the process without going through paper-based formalities.

So, no longer do they have to stand in line to wait for their turn to collect an admission form or a form for an entrance test. Instead, they can log into the college website, read the brochures informing them about the various courses and do the needful. Besides, they can visit the campus if and when they want to by adjusting their schedules with the institutes’ official time.

Evidently, the online facility has eased the procedure, especially for students who can’t travel to and fro due to long distances. But, unfortunately, we need to address vital underlying issues such as inconvenient online application forms. One of the process's initial parts includes filling out the application form for a particular course.

However, students face issues if the college website or portal constantly glitches and causes non-user-friendly online application forms. Therefore, it is best to choose software that helps students easily navigate admission-related activities on the computer. Besides, user-friendly applications or admission forms save a lot of time, reduce manual errors, and increase student satisfaction.

2. Overwhelming Student Queries

Imagine being a college administrator and bearing the responsibility of executing multiple activities simultaneously. The pressure becomes overwhelming when they face several students consecutively coming up to them to resolve their doubts and queries. Moreover, they need to focus on eliminating specific issues, including the redressal of document mixups, late verification of transcripts, etc. At the same time, they need to be responsive to students’ queries; however, regardless of their experience and expertise, they can’t help but feel exhausted. That is the reason the college admission team or admin staff need an effective system.

Besides, a proper platform that connects students with the institutes will help streamline the communication system. For instance, institutes can set up an online query resolution system, wherein the institute’s admin can solve students' queries via mail, calls, or chats. Additionally, they can integrate the following into the online enrollment:

• They can incorporate a ticketing system over the email query resolution system, enabling them to keep track of students’ issues. Also, it helps them figure out the number of resolved issues, pending queries, etc.
• They can use chatbots to automate problem resolution; it is a program that responds to live chat students’ queries by extracting contents from frequently asked questions.
• Institutes can also include admission helpline numbers, helping students to call and resolve their doubts.

3. Lack of Effective Fees Collection System

Throughout enrollment, students must pay a stipulated amount for different things, such as application form charges, semester and admission fees, additional charges for study materials, etc. According to the traditional system, students were required to pay the fees in person to the administrative staff, and they would give a receipt for the same.

However, the manual process was time-consuming and tedious; the staff had to keep the receipts and retrieve them during the audit. Thankfully, institutes have adopted appropriate technical systems, enabling them to automate the fee collection process. Besides, the online fee collection method enables them to easily pay admission fees.

On the other hand, the administrative staff do not need to keep paper-based documents: they can download and store the auto-generated fee payment receipts. Additionally, it's a modernized fee collection mechanism that helps to reduce delays and procedural lag.

4. Delay in Appropriate Student Evaluation

The common entrance test is one of the primary exams that institutes conduct to assess the aptitude of students. Besides, these are an integral part of the admission procedure to professional degree courses in medicine, architecture, dental, engineering, etc. However, colleges’ core team members handle multiple tasks associated with scheduling the exams and the post-exam activities.

Furthermore, the college admission team members can easily execute the tasks by organizing the exam dates and posting the schedule on the institute’s website. Teachers or examiners can update the exam result in the web portal, enabling them to edit digitized reports. And students can accordingly check the same online without visiting the institute premises.

5. Difficulty in Tracking Student Admission

During college admission, students are not the only ones who struggle to keep up with the various processes; administrative staff often receive criticism during a hick-up or major and minor issues. Regardless, they strive to deal with significant obstacles, including delayed document verification, technical glitches in the system, etc.

Additionally, they manage different batches of students at the same time; for instance, they ensure smooth admission for new students and execute the necessary formalities for students graduating a particular semester. Simultaneously, they need to ensure that institutes exams go well and contribute effectively to student retention.

Doing multiple things at the same time can cause exhaustion and minor errors but not if they have advanced admission software that helps coordinate different activities. It also helps track the number of student admissions, in-progress applications and admission status, respectively.