Currently we allow anyone to search and apply to an "Apply-To" where students can get in the pool who should never have applied. Though they are not recommended these necessarily WISC would like for students who qualify, similar to conditional applications to only have the ability to apply to "Apply-To" opportunities. See below from one of their OA's:
"This is not a workable solution in my mind as I will now get non-qualified students in the application. As you know, the time students spend in filling out the application they are not eligible for and the administrative time it takes me to weed them out is not efficient for either stakeholder."
I have mentioned the ability to easily weed out students based on "0" qualifications but being the applicant spent the time is more of the concern they would like to limit. Keith Brown
Employee Name | Cammy Jagielski |
Client Name "shard name" | delhi, mtsu, umass, wisc, colby, towson |
User | Opportunity Admin |
Functional Unit | Apply-to |
UW-Madison was really excited this got released but in its current format it is not useful. The functionality is limited to system admins only and our opportunity admins are the ones that need this access. Can you please update this so UW-Madison can use this functionality. Also, update your documentation to make this limitation clear. Thank you
I second Lori Tatsch's comment. Please add SVSU to this request. We recently tried to refer a student to apply for a scholarship, and because the scholarship uses Opportunity Specific Questions in the Qualifications, it shows her as not qualified because she hasn't answered the questions. Which is absurd because she has to be allowed to apply in order to ANSWER THE QUESTIONS. We have multiple scholarships that use questions in the Qualifications. This will be a signficant issue and inconvenience to us and require extensive reformatting of qualifications prior to our next scholarship cycle. Please allow for an OPT OUT!
Please add a feature to opt-out universally. The "Only allow qualified students to apply to an Apply-to opportunity" is a good feature, but not for all users. I only learned about this feature when frantic students told me they could not apply for a scholarship even though they knew they met all the requirements. BBAM should have notified us in advance of implementing this feature.
Our process allows students to apply for scholarship opportunities before semester grades are submitted and before registration for the upcoming semester (when they are not qualified yet). If the applicants meet all qualifications when the reviews begin, their application moves to the review committees.
Where we saw the problem was with the recommended opportunities. For example, the system recommended an automotive major apply for a nursing scholarship. However, we weeded out students based on "0" qualifications, and only qualified applications moved forward for review (in this case, nursing majors moved forward but not automotive).
With this new feature in place, need to be able to opt-out universally. I do not look forward to manually opting out one opportunity at a time.
Please add College of DuPage to the list as well. I am happy this is hapening!
Please add Georgia Southern University to this list
Please add the University of Oklahoma to the list of requesters. This would immensley help our process.
Recently, we found that BAM will also recommend opportunities that students are ineligible for when using Admin Questions. In our use case, we had a qualification that looked for 'Admin Question' on General App must include "Yes." However, students with no value were also matching to the opportunity. Per BAM Support, this is because with a NULL response they didn't NOT match to the opportunity. As a result, opportunities that have nothing to do with incoming students (or many others) are being displayed in students' Recommended Opportunities by virtue of them not actively being disqualified. To me, this approach seems like a stretch - our users are setting qualifications largely for matching purposes and it can cause major confusion when the # of matches they see on the Qualifications tab doesn't actually line up with what's happening in the student portal. In my opinion, students should have to meet at least 1 qualification group to see an application in their Recommended Opportunities.
For BAM reference, this is Case 018679728 for UW-Madison.
Yes!
Yes, this request will immensely assist with reducing the time for students to apply as well as well review times. Our school struggles with having staff and faculty sign up to review each cycle and this will be a huge help!
I would love this option as well! This has been such a problem at our institution that now we always start each Apply-To with a question that specifically outlines the requirements for the scholarship and who qualifies, and has a mandatory one-choice answer of "I understand". But we still get many disappointed students who feel like they have wasted their time, and many frustrated Admins/Reviewers who are spending time on unqualified applications.
I think this feature would be great for many of our departments who receive over 500 scholarship applications. However, other opportunities hardly receive any eligible candidates. I think this feature would be great for only specific opportunities for that reason. It may be an easy checkbox when setting them up with their application type, visibility, etc.
This is still a big request for UW Madison Opportunity Admins
Farrah Trimble - I agree that they should be able to read and follow instructions. What if the student simply makes a mistake and accidently selects the wrong response from a list? If the system is going to prevent them from applying, it's important to us that they be notified as to why they are blocked from applying.
Many of our users are 17 years old, first-gen students or students from low-income high schools that don't have the resources to provide a lot of support. We want to give these students a little help in completing applications. Simply blocking them from applying due to an error or not understanding how to answer a question will result in a lot of emails to our support desk. If it is possible for the system to tell them WHY they can't apply at the time they are blocked, that would be very helpful to us and our population of students.
Pepperdine University agrees with this issue.
Ellen Vietor - I do not see a need to provide a reason why a student does not meet the criteria. We provide the criteria up front to students. If they apply for a scholarship that requires them to live in a county but they live in another, the student is fully aware they do not the meet the criteria. Some students apply thinking they will pass the criteria and others do not read the criteria. Reading and following directions is part of being a college student, it prepares students for the working world.
I want the system to do a better job of pulling the students out. Maybe the application would not complete. Could a setting be added to the criteria that marks it a mandatory for qualified applications to reach application completion? This may not solve 100% of the issue, but it would help for most basic criteria (county/city, major, GPA).
It is good to know that others have this same issue and it is not just a setting mistake on our part.
A similar request came up from CSU Chico and CSU Sacramento. One admin described it as a "disappointing experience" for applicants when they apply for scholarships that they are not qualified for (especially if they apply for many).
We would like this feature ONLY if the system told the student why they cannot apply. For example, we have many opportunities that are county based. Often students select the wrong county on their General Application. We would need the system to flag for them that they are not able to apply due to county. (or GPA, or what ever is disqualifying them) so then can correct the Gen App in the event that an error on Gen App is making them look disqualified when they actually are qualified.
Jennifer Carter from mtsu would also like this enhancement
Scott Lamer from colby also requested this feature
Jen Beane from U of Massachusetts Amherst would like this as well