Appalachian State University Partners with Artsyl for a Winning Admissions Processing Game Plan

By automating its admissions process with docAlpha, “APP” stays ahead of the competition

The Challenge

In 2013, when Appalachian State University announced that its sports programs were stepping up to the FBS level and joining the Sun Belt, it wasn’t just its rivals (like FBS member Georgia Southern) that took note. Graduating high school seniors suddenly began to line up to join the school and the volume of admission applications increased.

After an initial struggle at the FBS level, the Appalachian State University football team went on a 6-game winning streak, with upset wins over last year’s Sun Belt co-champions Arkansas State and Louisiana — Lafayette.

That’s when admissions really took off.

For Associate Director of Admissions Sarah-Davis Cagle, it was the beginning of an exciting and very challenging time in her role. According to Cagle, winning the recruiting game means processing applications quickly and being first to the mailbox with an acceptance letter for a prospective student.

“When I first came on board, we saw a jump in our applications which was a new challenge for us,” Cagle said.

We always want be the first one in the mailbox so to speak; we always brag about what our volume is, but then we want to make sure that if we’re bragging about volume, we’re also bragging about our efficiency and how quickly we’re turning things around for everybody.”

The Solution

Appalachian State University had decided to implement the docAlpha Digital Transformation platform to automate data entry and processing for over 75,000 admissions documents for 18-to-19,000 student admissions applications annually.

With docAlpha, Appalachian State University is able to automatically extract student information from high school transcripts and other required documents like background checks, reducing the amount of manual document handling and data entry.

According to Cagle, the introduction of docAlpha dramatically streamlined the university’s admission process, even during peak enrollment. Best of all, Cagle said that her experience working with docAlpha and coming up to speak was seamless.

“It was super smooth,” said Cagle, “When I first came on board is when we saw a jump in enrollment because we had some good publicity on a national scale, so our volume jumper. There were days when I was pulling a thousand transcripts down and running them through docAlpha.”

Today, as Appalachian State University continues to grow, Cagle and the admissions team are able to keep pace, thanks to docAlpha. By relying on automation to streamline the process and reduce manual data entry, Cagle can allocate one less FTE to manually processing documents, while keeping pace with rising enrollment and peak periods near the enrollment deadline.