As a July 15 admissions deadline brings hundreds of high school transcripts to Undergraduate Admissions in Mrak Hall each day, Lori David, Jill Van Liew and Terry Morales busily scan and index them as part of a process that will make the documents available online for authorized use.

The team's work may be a labor-intensive exercise, but with other recent innovations in the admissions office — including online reading of freshman applications, new reporting features and online transactions for admitted students — it brings a freshman applicant's total record online and streamlines the admissions process for students and UC Davis employees alike.

UC Davis is processing applications more quickly and can generate more timely and powerful reports for decision making.

And as the UC system moves toward centralized admissions processing, the campus has become a model for others. For example, Davis this January became the first UC campus to use online reading after it took advantage of comprehensive, raw application data made available to campuses from the Office of the President.

"It allows us to do our job in a more timely, efficient manner," said Darlene Hunter, associate director with responsibility for application, selection and reporting processes in admissions.

First with online reading

By winter 2007, UC plans to introduce a new system for the centralized processing of applications and scholarships for the convenience of applicants and to reduce the duplication when a student applies to more than one UC campus.

To get there, the Office of the President is encouraging campuses to bring their application systems online, and UC Davis admissions officials showcased their innovations at a recent systemwide admissions technology retreat they hosted here in Davis.

Brian Alexander, associate director of technology and computing in the admissions office, said the campus moved to online reading to reduce the problems associated with managing thousands of paper files and distributing them to readers, to reduce manual keying of data, to better track evaluation and to provide authorized access to any student application from anywhere.

Logging on to the Web-based system, readers review applications and assign points according to comprehensive review criteria. And as they look at each application in the font size of their choice, they can make notes on it or check a box to ask for a second reader to have a look. They can click through to read the scoring policy for each criterion. And the system provides summaries of what files have been started and completed.

"I wanted to be able to mimic the behavior people did when they looked at paper," Alexander said.

In a recent survey, readers gave high marks to their experience with the system. And in the end, Alexander said, about 100 readers — 25 fewer than last year — evaluated some 20,000 freshman applications in three fewer weeks.

Improved reporting

Among the other benefits of the new online reading system are new reporting features. The system provides real-time reports on demand, and users can customize reports with a wide selection of variables. The reports are used by several offices on campus for a variety of purposes, including monitoring progress related to enrollment targets.

And reports that once took hours to days to run or the work of a programmer can now be completed in just minutes. "It has enabled us to improve service, effectiveness and efficiency in an array of formats." Hunter said.

This fall, Alexander says he will develop a similar system for the online reading of transfer students' applications and the accompanying reports.

Online transactions

The admissions Web site, now in its second year, replaces the paper admissions package and enables students to walk through most of their admissions decisions and transactions — from fee payment to reporting mandatory immunizations — online.

Each student has customized pages based on his or her major and other circumstances. As a result of collaboration with other departments, there are special pages for completing virtually any enrollment-related tasks from reserving residence hall space to dealing with financial aid. And step by step, the site lets each applicant know what he or she needs to do next.

Taking admissions online to a student's password protected account, however, made it harder for parents to be part of their child's admissions process, said Tom Hinds, who is responsible for marketing in the admissions office. So this March, the site added informational Web pages, at myadmissions.ucdavis.edu/parents, to help parents follow the admissions process and learn about the campus.

Scanning

The admissions Web site, among other things, directs students to submit their official final grades, and the mail then forms neat, temporary piles beside the scanner stations. Once the scanning and indexing of those and other documents is done, the items can be viewed using the online system.

Connie Smith, who oversees transcript evaluation, said authorized staff can search for the documents by the student's first or last name, ID number, Social Security number or other identifiers. "You're not limited," Smith said. "That's what's good."

Evaluators can highlight parts of the record, apply a stamp indicating action to be taken, attach notes about a telephone conversation with the student and easily adapt form e-mails to communicate with an applicant.

For the fall 2004 admissions cycle, the processing unit scanned more than 150,000 documents of about 70 types — from transcripts to letters explaining a problematic drop in final grades. For fall 2005, the three scanners will continue their work.