Profi leFounded in 1881, the University of Connecticut is the state’s fl agship public comprehensive institution with more than 28,000 enrolled students. The university is comprised of 13 schools, including a school of med-icine and dentistry, and fi ve regional campuses. It is also recognized as a Carnegie Foundation Research university (a distinction shared by fewer than 4% of America’s higher education institutions). Because of its outstanding reputation, the university draws a signifi cant number of students from the entire New England area, resulting in more than 22,000 annual freshmen and transfer applications, a 79% increase since 1995.

Online Application Improves Productivity and Provides Competitive Edge

Success Story

University of Connecticut28,000 total students

20,000 undergraduates

15,700 undergraduates at the main campus in Storrs

22,000 applications annually

76% growth in online freshmen applications

30%+ effi ciency improvement in application processing

Results (continued)

Streamlined processes: The university can in-stantly determine where it stands in terms of applications received, confi rm applications quickly, and provide application data to its admissions evaluators immediately.

Collection of additional data: The automated online system allows the collection of addi-tional data without impacting departmental processing resources. Informational needs of other university departments are now better served.

Improved reliability: The Xap-hosted CT-Mentor.org portal provides a redundant serv-er network with 24/7 reliability.

Improved selectivity: The ability to process applications effi ciently ensures that the uni-versity is responsive to and able to secure competitive students more quickly. As a re-sult, the university has raised the academic profi le of its incoming classes.

The premier provider of online integrated student and educational services.

© 2006 Xap Corporation. All rights reserved. Xap and Mentor are registered trademarks of Xap Corporation. Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

Next:How do you garner the necessary processing effi ciency from existing staff to deal with a signifi cantly increased number of admission applications?

For more informationIf you would like additional information about this and other Xap Corporation solutions, please contact:

Xap Corporation3534 Hayden AveCulver City, CA 90232310.842.9800sales@xap.comcorp.xap.com

26494 XAP_UConn Bro.indd 126494 XAP_UConn Bro.indd 1 2/24/06 4:36:13 PM2/24/06 4:36:13 PM

ChallengesUntil recently, managing the University of Connect-icut’s growing application pool had been increasing-ly diffi cult and costly. The university’s homegrown online-application system, which co-existing with a separate student information system, was mini-mally effective, at best. For example, unless pros-pects were paying the application fee by credit card, they were required to print out the online applica-tion form and complete it by hand. Once the form was submitted, the university staff had to manually enter all applicant information into the legacy stu-dent information system. Finally, a lack of timely access to application data hindered the admissions offi cials’ ability to make critical assessments regard-ing recruitment efforts and their ability to meet the university’s enrollment goals.

According to Frances Whittles, the university’s Senior Associate Director for Undergraduate Ad-missions, “During peak periods, more than 500 applications can be received daily. Even with the increasingly large number of hired temporary staff, our manual data-entry process caused us to fall fur-ther and further behind.” This resulted in signifi -cant backlogs and frustrated applicants. Compli-cating matters even more was a server crash, which shut down the online-application system for weeks. The result was that data, time, and applications were lost.

Next:So what did they do?

SolutionThe State of Connecticut Board of Governors for Higher Education, the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, and the Connecticut Economic Resource Center partnered to improve college access through Xap Corporation’s college-planning Mentor portal (CTMentor.org). That part-nership allowed the University of Connecticut to take advantage of a hosted web service that, along with many other benefi ts, provided an online ap-plication that was customized to provide the same look and feel as the university’s own. But that was just the beginning of an extensive transformation.

“With Xap’s technology, we knew we would be able to integrate the data from online applications into our soon-to-be-implemented PeopleSoft stu-dent-information system, which lacked an online application,” Whittles said.

The goal was to automate the process, dramati-cally reduce costs and required resources, eliminate manual data entry and its consequent backlogs, as-sess application receipts more quickly, and respond to students considering other higher education in-stitutions of comparable standing. “The quicker we can respond to students, the more competitive we are,” Whittles said. “Ultimately, we wanted to re-duce barriers to students applying online and start to move toward a paperless operation.” To that end, the university has recently removed its paper appli-cation from its viewbook (reducing the number of applications being printed by more than 100,000) and chose to mail a signifi cantly smaller supply of paper applications to its feeder high schools. Since Xap had already developed a custom applica-tion for the University of Connecticut through the state’s Mentor portal, linking it to the university’s website was easy to implement. “Choosing Xap’s hosted service eliminated the cost of redoing the application with another vendor, paying per-appli-cation fees that were customary with other ven-dors, and expending valuable in-house resources to manage the technology,” Whittles said. “We already knew Xap could provide what we needed, and their ability to integrate with PeopleSoft’s sys-tem was critical.”

ResultsToday the University of Connecticut’s application service is integrated with the PeopleSoft student-information system. The university is able to be more responsive to students and able to control the timeliness and consistency of its offers of ad-mission. In addition, because admissions offi cers can now easily and quickly assess the rate of ap-plications received relative to application goals, they can react more quickly and adjust their re-cruitment focus if necessary.

In terms of their specifi c goals, some of the benefi ts include:

Increased recruitment: The university has in-creased overall freshmen web applications by 76% this year.

Improved effi ciency: The university’s online application from Xap made their processing three times faster than the former manual data-entry procedure, because of its integra-tion with its PeopleSoft student-information system.

“Ultimately, we wanted to reduce barriers to students applying online and start to move toward a paperless operation.”

Frances Whittles, Senior Associate Director for Undergraduate Admissions

“With Xap’s technology, we knew we would be able to integrate the data from online applications into our soon-to-be-implemented PeopleSoft student-information system, which lacked an online application.”

Frances Whittles, Senior Associate Director for Undergraduate Admissions

26494 XAP_UConn Bro.indd 226494 XAP_UConn Bro.indd 2 2/24/06 6:07:44 PM2/24/06 6:07:44 PM