Transcript processing is time consuming and prone to human error

Evaluating potential transfer students begins much the same way at most colleges and universities: with data entry. Admissions officers must typically enter every course name, code and grades for each student into their systems manually, before they can even start evaluating them against their own course offerings and standards. This critical analysis allows them to determine both whether to grant admission and how many credits the student can use toward degree completion.

While necessary, the manual process can be cumbersome and is prone to potential human error. Further, it takes valuable time away from skilled staff’s work analyzing student histories and slows the admissions process. A new, automated solution from Laserfiche, designed with admissions officers from a major state university, offers a faster, integrated way to ease the transfer process.

“Transcript processing is very time consuming,” says Allison Young, Senior Director of Presales and Service Delivery for Laserfiche, who helped develop the product. “This automated solution can extract the information from incoming transcripts and present it in an easy-to-validate and process format, pulling out course information, student information and past degrees, presenting that along with any potential issues for staff to quickly review, so they can make the call whether a student should progress to the next step.”

Co-Created Solution

Laserfiche offerings are flexible enough to adapt to individual needs. However, when its admissions partner approached Young, asking for help with automating the transcript process, she was intrigued. “They told us they were losing potential students, because it was taking them too long to get through the transcripts,” she says, adding that each transcript was taking upwards of 20 minutes just to enter into the system.

“Partnering with a university admissions office gave us the institutional knowledge to make this successful,” she says, noting that their initial design was quite different from the final product. “Once we started working with admissions staff, we learned about their pain points and how they typically interact with documents and transcripts,” she said, adding that it helped them develop a streamlined solution that can be customized for other colleges and universities.

Prepping the transcript for review

Once admissions officers receive transcripts, they upload them into the Laserfiche product, which can quickly tap into student information systems like Ellucian’s Banner to determine how each student’s completed courses align with their universities’. “English 101 looks different everywhere,” Young says. This kind of integration allows admissions staff to spend their time focusing on how much credit each student should receive for a given course, instead of manual data entry.

In addition to saving time, the Laserfiche system can also provide data validation. Because student transcripts are so prone to human error, the product is ready to flag student identification numbers, dates or course numbers that are either in the wrong format or fall outside typical expectations, updating them in real time while flagging for admissions officers to quickly resolve. “We want to make sure student information is as accurate as possible before it gets in front of human eyes,” Young says.

Faster transcript processing is leading to quicker, more meaningful interactions between students and admissions offices. Prospective students can follow along, seeing when their transcripts are entering the system and when they’re under review with staff. And in a digital world where everyone is used to receiving frequent updates, this type of real-time notification matters, Young says. Those touchpoints and faster decisions can provide a competitive edge for universities, especially when students are applying to multiple institutions. 

Adaptive product

While Laserfiche initially developed this solution for a larger state university, it’s already working with other types of institutions, including community colleges, to adapt the product to suit their unique needs. It’s even looking at how it can work with high school transcripts. 

Young, who is a software engineer by training, says while Laserfiche can translate across institutions, the company can always make bespoke modifications as needed, as personalized consulting is a part of the solution.

“What we offer every university is unique. We show them how easy it is to modify the fields or add new ones,” she says, adding that Laserfiche works with admissions staff on proof of concept to determine what changes are necessary. “We can always tweak it on the fly,” she says. “Slight modifications will always be needed, but in general the base process has translated pretty well.”

This custom content is sponsored by Laserfiche and developed by Inside Higher Ed's sponsored content team. The editorial staff of Inside Higher Ed had no role in its creation.