The Anglo-American School of Sofia had a desire to streamline their admissions process for many reasons, including:
- The applications and supporting documents were all paper-based. This was causing a waste of paper and a risk of misplacing parts of the applications, plus a storage issue.
- The school was dependent on the Admissions Officer to move applications along. This made it very difficult for anyone to deputise for the admissions department during sickness or holiday and ensure that an application didn’t stall.
- It was complicated to keep records and store and recall data in a usable format.
- It was difficult for staff to review applications if they were not at school and didn’t have the applicant’s folder in their hands
- Transferring approved applications to the student information system was time consuming.- Applications were difficult to decipher because many of them were hand-written.
The Anglo-American School of Sofia’s approach was slow but thorough and determined. After much consultation with those involved in the process in our own school and colleagues from other international schools, we chose OpenApply. But the work was not done. Lynne and Angela will share their experience, challenges, and rewards in implementing a system that was completely new to all in the community. They will review what they learned along the way by trying, evaluating and changing direction as they went.
