Navigating the college admissions process can be a daunting task for students, parents, and educators alike — especially with the increasing competition of college applications and deadline requirements.
The right automation tools can make all the difference.
With features like application tracking, essay editing, deadline reminders, and personalized college recommendations, these tools not only assist students in managing their applications more effectively but also provide parents with insights to better support their children.
For educators, the benefits are substantial — automated software can help track student progress, manage recommendations, and ensure that important deadlines are met.
The best college admission software should be able to meet all your needs. But with so many options available, how do you choose the right one for you?
In this article, we will examine the features and benefits of the top higher education enrollment software to help you make the college admission journey as smooth as possible.
What Is College Admission Software?
College admission software refers to any tool designed to simplify various aspects of the admissions and enrollment process. It can assist with tasks such as reaching out to prospective students, processing applications, handling online payments, and selecting candidates.
Key benefits of using university admissions software include:
- Handling high-volume applications: Efficiently manage a large number of applications without the associated hassle.
- Reducing manual labor: Automate tasks to minimize manual work and reduce paperwork, contributing to eco-friendly practices.
- System integration: Seamlessly integrate with existing systems to improve communication and coordination with students.
- Recruiting the right candidates: Use data and automation to identify and recruit the most suitable candidates for your educational institutions.
- All-in-one solution: Comprehensive tool for both admissions staff and student information management system.
The 9 Best Admissions Software for Colleges
There is a wide range of school admissions software available on the market, each offering unique key features to ease specific aspects of the admission process:
1. Social Intents for Live Chat
Nearly all prospective candidates use smartphones and favor messaging apps for communication. Live chat on college websites mimics this experience, providing an intuitive and immediate way for students to ask questions and get support.
Social Intents’ live chat easily integrates with popular collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Chat, and Webex, allowing you to manage all communications from familiar platforms.
Live chat offers endless benefits for school admissions:
- Immediate responses and FAQs handling: Social Intents lets you respond to admissions FAQs within seconds using chatbots, while more complex queries are directed to live agents. This ensures that students receive timely and accurate information, reducing their anxiety during the admission process.
- 24/7 availability: With AI-powered chatbots, you can provide round-the-clock support to both domestic and international students. This is crucial given the varying time zones and the need for instant information during the high-pressure admissions process.
- Document transfer and financial transactions: The live chat platform offers a comprehensive solution for managing real-time document transfers and secure financial transactions This simplifies the submission of necessary paperwork and payment processes.
- Video chat and co-browsing: For more personalized support, Social Intents offers video chat capabilities and co-browsing, allowing admissions officers to guide students through the application process visually and interactively. This builds trust with the admissions committee and leads to quicker resolutions to complex queries.
- Personalized engagement: The chat history and pre-chat forms enable a personalized experience for each student, making interactions more meaningful. Agents can address students by name and reference previous conversations.
- Unlimited agents: Unlike many other live chat solutions, Social Intents allows for unlimited agents on all its plans, ensuring that all staff members, from admissions officers to academic advisors, can participate in student support.
2. Liaison for Targeting Your Best-Fit Students
Liaison is a known admissions software for schools that helps higher education institutions make effective, data-driven decisions. Their suite of services includes:
- Enrollment software
- Centralized Application Service (CAS)
- Marketing solutions for colleges
- Student portfolio management
- Admissions management systems
- Student lifecycle management
- Data-driven student selection
Their Centralized Application Service (CAS) actively targets your best-fist students by streamlining the entire admissions process with application processing and support services.
This includes easy submission of supporting documents, transcripts, and recommendation requests. Students can also answer additional questions specific to individual campuses or programs, such as essays, personal statements, CVs/resumes, or work samples.
The platform also allows applicants to manage the entire process from a single dashboard.
Overall, their centralized hub helps educational organizations attract and enroll the most suitable candidates for their programs by providing data-driven targeting, a streamlined application process, and continuous applicant engagement.
3. Salesforce for an All-In-One CRM
Salesforce is not just a CRM for large organizations but also a powerful tool for colleges and universities looking to simplify enrollment processes.
With Salesforce Education Cloud, institutions can:
- Access data from one dashboard: Consolidate all constituent data into one system to provide personalized experiences throughout the education journey.
- Customize to institutional needs: Tailor Education Cloud to your institution’s requirements and leverage over 4,000 apps from AppExchange. This customization ensures that the CRM can adapt to the unique processes and needs of any educational institution.
- Join a thriving community: Participate in customer councils, get support from the Trailblazer community, or connect with a certified partner.
- Better enrollment management system: Achieve enrollment goals with a scalable recruitment and admissions CRM. Salesforce enables institutions to engage students on their preferred channels, simplify application and decision processes, and build stronger relationships through personalized communication strategies.
4. Simply Apply for Enrollment and Admissions Processes
A higher education school management software impacts both front-end applicants and your admissions staff.
Keeping this in mind, Simply Apply offers the following education management solutions for admissions and enrollment:
- Best practice application: Provides a ready-made application template that includes essential questions in compliance with federal reporting standards.
- List data management: Manage list data crucial for reporting (dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes). Easily add, edit, or delete list item descriptions and codes.
- Customization and application text management: Update your college name, logo, or color scheme. If your application process changes, you can edit the application text to adjust the workflow for your prospects.
- User-focused application and console: Optimize the user experience for candidates, making the entire application process straightforward.
Simply Apply also offers Section 508 accessibility, allowing users with disabilities to interact with the application easily.
5. Lexmark for Enrollment Management
Lexmark’s software is designed to encourage educational institutions to spend more time on teaching and less on administration. They offer a complete solution for enrollment management:
- Admission processing and evaluation: Users can instantly access and manage information from an existing student information system, enabling faster decisions for both undergraduate and graduate students. This allows staff to focus on student recruitment instead of managing manual data entry tasks.
- Financial aid processing: Lexmark’s automation technology helps financial aid teams quickly and accurately manage all types of documents and data, even during peak enrollment times when submissions are highest.
- Registrar and records management: Efficiently manage records throughout the student lifecycle. Unlike paper versions, digital student records managed with Lexmark can be instantly and securely accessed from any location.
- Transcript processing: Lexmark’s transcript processing software captures and processes even the most complex transcript formats, extracts student and course data, validates it, and integrates it into your student information system. This allows institutions to deliver timely decisions to students, helping to meet admissions goals more quickly by enrolling transfer students sooner.
These solutions streamline various administrative tasks, reduce paperwork, and enhance the overall efficiency of the enrollment management process.
6. Ellucian for All Higher Education Institutions
Ellucian is a popular admissions and enrollment software that focuses exclusively on higher education.
Some key features and benefits include:
- Personalized communication: Engage students through personalized conversations via text, email, and social platforms.
- Real-time application monitoring: Review application performance in real-time, allowing you to adjust campaign tactics to reach your enrollment goals effectively.
- Streamlined processes and automation: Connect one-on-one with prospects through streamlined processes and task automation, making the recruitment process more efficient and personalized.
- Detailed reports: Utilize data and reporting tools to focus on prospect segments most likely to apply.
- Dynamic portals: Create a dynamic portal for prospects to track their application status, connect with staff or peers, and receive timely updates.
- Role-based dashboards and reports: Configure role-based dashboards and reports so users can see current progress and adjust strategies as needed.
7. Collegix for Small and Mid-Sized Institutions
Collegix by Aptron is a comprehensive school management system tailored for college and university admissions. It offers a variety of services that cater to the needs of both students and administrative staff, including:
- Self-service for students and staff: Facilitates easy access to necessary information and processes.
- Financial aid management: Streamlines the handling of financial aid applications and disbursements, ensuring accuracy and efficiency.
- Student lifecycle management: Supports all phases of the student journey from admission to graduation.
- Student advancement: Helps track and promote student progress and achievements.
- HR and finance: Manages human resources and financial operations within the institution.
- Third-party integrations: Ensures smooth integration with other essential software and platforms.
- Engaging applicant hub: Guides prospective students from inquiry through to enrollment, making the process engaging and straightforward.
- Powerful recruiter dashboard: Provides student admissions staff and counselors with tools for tracking, communicating, and coordinating with prospective students.
- Comprehensive office module: Streamlines admissions office operations, optimizing time and resources spent on administrative processes.
By using Collegix, institutions can effectively attract and enroll a diverse and highly qualified student body, improve retention rates, and streamline the admissions process. As a result, they can achieve higher student satisfaction and better overall academic performance.
8. Populi for All Needs of Smaller Colleges
Populi is an ideal enrollment solution for small schools, designed to cater to the entire college ecosystem—from staff, faculty, alumni, and board members to students and applicants.
It offers a wide array of functionalities for teaching, administration, financial aid, fundraising, and more:
- Online and mobile applications: Populi provides easy-to-design web-based applications that allow candidates to start, stop, and continue their applications at any time. The software monitors application progress and encourages completion from any device.
- Tuition management: Integrated application fees enable applicants to make tuition payments either before starting the application or as the final step before submission.
- Reporting: The software offers customizable and saveable reports to help keep your admissions team focused and organized.
- References: Securely request and receive applicant references 100% online, simplifying the recommendation process.
- In-app questions and answers: Applicants can submit questions directly from the application interface, and your team can follow up using in-app messaging.
Populi is designed to handle nearly every aspect of college administration and student engagement, making it a comprehensive solution for small to mid-sized institutions.
9. Slate for a Cost-Effective Choice
Slate.org is a free platform designed to foster stronger communication and collaboration between colleges, counselors, community-based organizations, and students.
As part of its commitment to promoting access to education, Slate.org offers its services for free to all parties, indefinitely.
Key features include:
- Information sharing: Colleges can create and share detailed profiles of their institutions, including information about programs and student demographics. This efficient communication management system helps in providing a comprehensive overview to prospective students.
- Event management: Institutions can display available visit times, customize instructions, and communicate any changes with visiting representatives. This feature is accessible to all through a public-facing portal.
- Decision release: Colleges can release their admission decisions online, allowing students to view their letters through the application status portal.
- Counselor tools: School counselors can review applications, upload documents, and track the progress of their students’ applications. This functionality helps in keeping all stakeholders informed and engaged throughout the admissions process.
- Student access: Students can log in using single sign-on (SSO) to track their applications, view counselor information, and receive updates, ensuring they are always aware of their application status and any required actions.
Make the Right Choice for Your Institution’s Future With the Best College Admission Software
There are hundreds of college admission software options on the market, each offering unique features to streamline the admissions process. Whether you need a comprehensive enrollment system that simplifies student registration or robust tuition management features for secure transactions, there is a tool designed to meet your institution’s specific needs.
If you want a solution that not only meets these needs but also excels in engaging prospective students, Social Intents is the right choice for your institution. With video chat capabilities for personalized support and AI-powered chatbots to automate common queries, Social Intents enhances the overall admissions experience for both students and staff.
Get started with our free 14-day trial today and transform your admissions communication.