1. Online Admissions Application Workshop for Graduate Administrators
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Rory McKeown, Admissions Assistant

2. Overview Who can do what? School of Graduate Studies
Graduate Administrators
Applicants
Definitions
Setting up the application
Deadlines and exceptions
Documents and references
What applicants see
What referees see

3. Who can do what?
Grad school entails a critical transition from consumer of knowledge to producer of knowledge.

4. School of Graduate Studies
Populates current POSt data into OAA
Opens overall system
Edits applicant information after payment
Can log in as
Administrator
Applicant
Referee
Reassigns applicant account to new

5. Graduate Administrators
Set deadlines and exceptions, mark POSt application as active
Create documents
Change required documents
Upload and delete applicant documents
Edit referee contact information
Updates and corrections
Non-institutional addresses
Activate evaluation
Generate reports

6. Applicants Can update applicant information before payment is made
Difference between first application and later
Exception: legal status, change of name, deleting school from academic history (SGS)
Upload required documents
Cannot remove or correct document (unit)
Input referee contact information
Cannot edit or correct after payment (unit)
Self-report and update English scores

7. Definitions

8. Applicant Statuses Draft – Incomplete (information incomplete)
Draft – Complete (completed but no payment)
Payment uploads candidacy to ROSI and moves application to documents pending. This is the only point at which information rolls over from OAA to ROSI. (Offline payments are no longer accepted)
Documents Pending (paid but supporting documents outstanding)
Documents Received (applicant view only)
Under Review
Decision Made
Documents received was added recently; it’s only visible to applicants, not to administrators
Best practice: do not change application status to Decision Made until two weeks after the decision letter has been sent; mis-timing the switch will cause significant of and phone traffic both to SGS and the unit.

10. Live Demonstration! (For archived presentation, screenshots are included.)

11. Applicant View Screenshots

12. Applicant landing page, with listing of existing applications.

13. Applicant view: updating contact information. Applicant cannot change name or date of birth; SGS must do that.

14. Applicant can add to academic background, or edit an entry for an institution, but cannot delete an institution from academic background. Usually when applicants ask to do so, it’s because they performed poorly at that school.

16. Many students do not realize they can leave this section blank.

17. Program selection: note that students need to select unit first – this can be confusing for students, as they may not realize that under the alphabetical listings

18. Note that the OAA only standardizes responses that will be fed into ROSI. Some units have tried to use the “proposed area of study” to help them sort through applicants by prospective supervisor, but unless applicants input the information in a standardized way, this does not work very well.

19. The system will block applicants from adding referee s from Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail – unit staff can add those addresses, though, if they have verified the authenticity of the address.

20. Applicants can select to pay for only one application out of several, or pay all at once.

21. No applicant-entered information can be updated by the applicant after payment is made. It’s important to make this clear in the instructions on unit websites.

22. Unit View Screenshots

23. Admin landing page.

24. Quick Links
Applicant search – find individual applicants
Applications – list applications by PoSt, start date, etc.
Application dates and deadlines – set application deadline, document deadline, allow referees to submit after deadline, allow late applications
Tools
Master documents – templates for use by applicants and referees
Reference web forms – create online fillable forms for referees
Transcript settings – does your unit require hard copies at assessment?
System settings – enable or disable online review by admissions committee

25. It’s advisable to select a document closing date a week or two after the application deadline, as many applicants will apply at 11:59 PM, giving themselves little time to upload documents, and giving no chance for referees to provide references.
The PoSt must be ticked as active for the application option to be available to applicants.
If you disable the referee deadline, it will allow referees to submit letters after the document deadline.
Any requests sent with the referee deadline disable will give no deadline, but will ask for submission ASAP, which can cause confusion.
Pro-tip: leave the referee deadline active until the day of the document deadline. Then, at the end of the day, go in and disable the deadline to save you the work of uploading references for tardy referees.
Exceptions can be added at the link on the far right. Please note that any exceptions also do not have deadlines specified. If allowing a late application, be very clear with the applicant when they need to submit by, and impress on them that it is their responsibility to communicate this clearly to referees.

26. Assessment option only appears if you use Tools  System Settings  Online Assessment to enable the option.

27. Evaluators - add or remove faculty and staff as evaluators
Evaluators - add or remove faculty and staff as evaluators. Evaluators log on with UTORid.
Evaluator access – control when evaluators get access to applications
Applications for review – see which applications have been moved to under review.

28. On any given application, reviewers can only see those marked “Under Review.” If you want evaluators to be able to see incomplete applications, tick the “Evaluators can view” box.
Important:
Unless you untick the box, the application will remain in evaluators’ workflow even after it’s moved to Decision Made
Many admins tick this box not realizing that simply moving an application to Under Review will make it visible to reviewers

29. Evaluator landing