I would love to have Apply-Tos be easier to find for a student.  Student's don't think of scholarships in terms of the word "Opportunities" so to know to click on that, then on Recommended is not intuitive.  I have spent many phone calls instructing students on how to find a particular Apply-To that they want, especially when that Apply-To has an earlier deadline than a Conditional App (because the system pushes you towards the CA instead of putting you on your My Applications Grid). 

Please note, we would no longer like applicants to be recommended for opportunities if they have blank GA questions, but qualify on all other criteria. We are a CUUI school and this causes confusion for those students who receive an email asking them to apply for a scholarship in a system they may have not used before.

"Blank answers should disqualify an applicant from being recommended."

Oregon State University (oregonstate) and Georgia State University (gsu) are requesting that blank answers on GenApps be treated as disqualifying.

Additional context re: k-state - they added a description to opportunities about who should apply (students with disabilities) and applicants are reaching out to them, confused as to why they're recommended those opportunities when they clearly don't apply to them. The students assume the system is broken when they see those. They're being recommended because of blank answers for a qualification from the a GA or CA.

k-state is also experiencing this issue. See Request Entry-000022697 for more information. 

Please add UC-EAP-UCOP to this request.

Client had to completely change their conditional application - adding extra questions, and change their apply-to quals - because the system was recommending applicants to an opportunity that they were clearly not qualified for simply because they had some blank answers on their conditional app. If these quals were based on import fields instead of actual questions it would have disqualified them.

https://uc-eap-ucop.academicworks.com/

Happy to chat through client's use case if you'd like.

Problem: When a qualification is configured based on a non-imported question using the operator "Must not include "A Blank Answer"', applicants are recommended to apply (if they answer to that question is blank, of course). 

1. It was my understanding that we created the "Must Not Include "A Blank Answer" option to eliminate applicants from being recommended to Opportunities based on a blank answer.

2. The "Must Not Include "A Blank Answer" quals configured on imported questions work completely opposite of this - we will not recommend an applicant if the qual is set up as "Must not be Blank". I think the functionality should work consistently in order to reduce nuances. Jira ticket to reference when this change was made to import question. 
   
   

3. Logically speaking, should an applicant actually apply, they would be 100% not qualified for the Opp. It's odd to me that we intend on recommended something that they are in fact not qualified for.

I would love the chat about this more to get a better understand of why it works the way it does today. I'm also happy to chat to discuss my points further. 

Thank you! 

Please add calpoly to the list of clients for this one.

A lot of larger decentralized institutions are struggling with the fact that having no value in an imported field isn't a disqualifier. Indiana (IU) and Kansas (KU) are two of my latest. They have many import fields and very large applicant populations, and there are fields will never have values.  

UNCO wrote in recently and was convinced that apply-to Opportunity tiles would automatically appear if an applicant was recommended to an Opportunity. This idea made it easy for applicants to click on the tile and finish the supplemental questions. This might be a good idea moving forward. This would hopefully reduce the confusion around the green arrow, recommended tab and might encourage clients to use the Apply-to functionality more (instead of making a CA in place of an apply-to just because the client likes the CA functionality better). ZD Ticket #48837

University of Massachusetts Lowell would also like to have blank answers treated as disqualified.

SUNY College at Oswego would like to see blank answers treat as disqualified

Clients (just to name a few):  Beauty Changes Lives, ACC, Sinclair, ASRT

1. Green Arrow is not intuitive. It is often over looked. It would be better if the applicants were automatically populated onto the Recommended page once they submitted they GA and any CA's. and we have numerous clients who implement CA's for one Opportunity because they like how the CA's prompt they to apply. 

2. We have numerous clients who implement CA's for only one Opportunity because they like how the CA's prompt the applicant to apply. 

Here is snippet from ACC Ticket #46245 & #45855 - 

"The problem with the apply-to option is that after students have submitted the General Application, they forget to go back to the recommended applications and select the apply-to scholarships which require additional information. The conditional application would automatically prompt them to apply for those scholarships without having to go back and search for it, and select apply again."

3. Some of our clients dislike that applicants can apply for any/all scholarships. it would be nice if there could be a systemwide function that only allowed applicants to apply for Opportunities that they were qualified for. 

I don't know if this would be a separate enhancement request, but this is from the Educational Theatre Association 

Problem: Student Testers during implementation said it is confusing to them the way both these lists are ordered.

One Solution: Provide users the ability to sort All Opportunities and Recommended Opportunities alphabetically. I.E. Default is sorted by End Date, but give the applicant the ability to sort different ways.