CORNELL UNIVERSITY

The challenge facing Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management was clear: enhance its admissions process without compromising its personal approach. The solution, based on the graphical Microsoft® Windows™ environment, meets that challenge-and more.

The Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University offers a high-quality Master of Business Administration (MBA) program to a relatively small number of students-there are just 500 in a typical year. One of the program's strongest selling points is its small school atmosphere and the personal touch offered by a program this size.

With competition for top graduate students increasing, the admissions staff wanted to emphasize the school's personal approach to prospective students. At the same time, the staff needed to continue to improve its ability to recruit the best candidates from universities and businesses as early as possible. However, because the school receives up to 15,000 requests for information each year, it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a database of information about applicants.

According to Anne Coyle, the Johnson School's director of admissions, information on students was often submitted in paper form and kept in folders. "We had attempted to computerize the process," says Coyle. "But we had only a single PC that stored a dBASE III® database of student tracking information." As a result, the admissions staff constantly encountered a bottleneck that made entering data, tracking applications, and retrieving student information difficult.

The Admissions staff decided that, without a better system, it would become increasingly difficult to compete for high-caliber students because of the school's inability to track, evaluate, and respond to applicants in an efficient and effective manner. The staff began the search for a solution.

Microsoft Solution Provider Lends Expertise

The deficiencies in the existing admissions system made it easy for Coyle to outline what the school needed. Because one of the school's primary points of difference is its personal approach, the admissions department wanted a way to manage relationships with prospective students more effectively. That meant making sure each candidate received the appropriate information in a timely, professional way while leaving room for personalization. Along with better relationship and contact management, the school needed a way to generate and track correspondence with candidates and to store and retrieve information about applicants.

Because using Cornell's in-house development resources would have required too much of the Admissions office staff's time, Coyle turned to Microsoft Solution Provider Exeter Educational Management Systems of Cambridge, Massachusetts for assistance. "We knew about Exeter's Student Marketing System®," explains Coyle. "And we thought it would work well for the Johnson School."

Working with Exeter's Mark Cullen, the admissions department decided to completely revamp its computer system. "Our old system was woefully inadequate for any meaningful work, especially when you consider we get an average of 1250 information requests each month," says Coyle.

After extensive consulting and planning, the Johnson School opted to upgrade its entire admissions process

by installing Exeter's Microsoft Windows-based Student Marketing System.

Automated System Customized to Fit Specific Situation

Exeter developed its Student Marketing System with the Microsoft FoxPro database management system. The software includes an easy-to-use Microsoft Windows-based user interface that incorporates custom screens with pull-down menus, functions, and customized forms. The system operates on eight 486/33 desktop computers and a laptop computer on a local area network running Novell® NetWare®.

The system provides complete student tracking throughout the admission and enrollment processes. Information about each prospective student is stored on a dedicated file server and accessed through workstations on each admission officer's desk. The system makes extensive use of Microsoft Office applications to manage, organize, and format student data. According to Chris Morris, assistant director of admissions for the Johnson School, "The tight integration between Office applications enables users to automatically retrieve information from FoxPro tables on the server and bring it into Microsoft Access to build customized reports."

All correspondence from the Johnson School to prospective students is scheduled automatically through the system and created by the admissions staff using Microsoft Word for Windows. The staff can import database fields for automatic address merging and customized letter writing using Microsoft Word.

Microsoft Excel is used to generate presentation graphics and to capture selected information on applicants that arrives on floppy disks from MBA forums around the country and from educational services. Finally, the staff coordinates admissions interviews and travel commitments with Microsoft Schedule Plus.

System Improves Communications, Enhances Relationships

Morris says Exeter Student Marketing System is helping the school build strong relationships with prospective students by greatly improving the quality of its communications and by streamlining reporting. "One of the Johnson School's strengths has been the personal touch we give to our students," explains Morris. "Exeter's system helps us extend this touch to applicants."

Morris says information about contacts with each candidate, test scores, correspondence, and areas of academic interest can be retrieved easily by admissions staff on any personal computer on the network, eliminating the bottleneck that had been created by the office's previous system. "The beauty of the system is that users don't have to know which tool is being used to generate reports and other documents," says Morris. "The automation built into the system allows us to focus on managing the admissions process, not figuring out computer software."

Automation has cut the time required to generate custom reports from hours to minutes and eliminated the need for programming help from Cornell's MIS department. Correspondence is now scheduled and generated automatically at each step of the admissions process, making student contact more timely and more personalized.

Morris also says the system can be learned quickly, and has allowed the school to use temporary employees to enter data. This, combined with the ability to capture information from educational testing services on floppy disks, has increased the amount and quality of information available on each applicant while reducing input time by as much as 25 percent. In addition, collective scheduling of interviews and recruiting trips allows the admissions office to direct its resources more effectively.

Overall, the school expects Exeter Student Marketing System to help the admissions staff do a better job of targeting students for admission and to enroll a higher percentage of students who have been accepted.

System Enhancements Planned

According to Morris, Exeter Student Marketing System has been well received and plans are already in the works to do more with it. For instance, Exeter is enhancing the system's remote module to make it easier for admissions staff to access and use the system when traveling.

The system is also being expanded to allow the data it captures to be used by the registrar's office through existing interfaces, ODBC, and Microsoft Access.

Morris says the system is doing exactly what the school needed it to do. "It may seem to be a bit of a paradox

for a business school our size to use such a comprehensive computer system," he says. "But its advanced automation capabilities actually allow us to be even more personal than before."

And that's what Cornell's Johnson School of Management is all about.

Solution Overview

       School Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
     Solution Exeter Student Marketing System®
 Architecture Custom database combined with desktop applications
Products Used Microsoft Access
              Microsoft Excel
              Microsoft FoxPro
              Microsoft Schedule Plus
              Microsoft Windows
              Microsoft Word for Windows
      Benefit Enhances relationships with prospective students;
              improves communications with applicants; 
              streamlines reporting process; 
              reduces data input time by 25 percent

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