Established in 1989, Yuan Ze University (Chinese Traditional: 元智大學) has been recognized as a model for emerging universities and a top 12 university in Taiwan by the country’s Ministry of Education. Prior to implementing DreamApply, YZU faced significant operational hurdles in managing its international applications. The university staff reflected, “We had a tailored system designed for international student applications; however, it was made decades ago and was thus lacking in flexibility.”
This system, once a fit for YZU’s initial growth stages, increasingly became a roadblock. Staff described it as “clunky and unintuitive for today’s tech-savvy students,” highlighting the growing disconnect between the university’s processes and the expectations of modern applicants.
DreamApply provided a solution that simplified the application process, informed and implemented YZU’s marketing strategy, and allowed for custom workflows, all of which saved them time and accelerated their international growth strategy.
Intelligence and Marketing features turned weeks into days and saved 70% of the time spent on application review.
Admissions offices process hundreds of applications within a week during peak periods. With manual application review, this process can get overwhelming quickly. You take a break, extend your work hours, and like YZU staff used to do, you work overtime and weekends just to catch up. As if this process is not stressful enough, human error is likely to take place; maybe you sent an offer to the wrong candidate or forgot to inform the right candidate, and the admissions process is delayed.
How did intelligence and marketing features help YZU address these challenges?
The focus of the intelligence module in DreamApply is accuracy and consistency, with a mission to reduce manual tasks, human error and save on time. YZU staff that reviews applications used to spend a whole week (including the weekend) to complete this process; after implementing DreamApply, weeks of work turned into days, and they were able to focus on other priorities.
While the intelligence module made the work more comprehensive and easier, the marketing module made the interactions beyond direct communication between the staff and students more visible. Due to the marketing module, the software takes note of leads that only started their application and provides the staff with marketing tools to re-engage them. This way, YZU works smarter and not harder, showing more commitment to their prospective students who may be undecided.
With DreamApply, YZU conducts highly targeted marketing campaigns, ensuring a decrease in the rate of unfinished applications.
Yuan Ze University’s experience with DreamApply underscores its significant role in enhancing its marketing approaches, furthering its growth strategy. The university specifically notes, “The ability to segment and filter applicants based on attributes, engagement with previous campaigns, and stages within the admissions funnel unlocks personalization at scale.”
This functionality of DreamApply has enabled YZU to conduct “highly targeted outreach campaigns,” effectively reaching and re-engaging prospective students.
Moreover, YZU anticipates a decrease in the rate of unfinished applications, attributing this to DreamApply’s Leads feature which as they put it, allows them to “know where the application stops and the reason behind it.”
Why should a university invest money in technology?
If the answer to this question is not intuitive, statistics and real-life experiences paint a perfect picture. An Inside Higher Ed opinion article by Elizabeth Kirby, Turning the tide on admissions staff turnover (opinion) (insidehighered.com), examines how optimizing processes and getting to the root of operational challenges that are demotivating for admissions staff helped the institution achieve positive results over time and improve staff morale. They invested in technology, supported staff, and saved on the losses from high staff turnover.
YZU is already taking these steps. It is the first university in Taiwan to implement DreamApply and push for an innovative approach to growing its international enrollment. They already see the reduced hours spent on manual tasks and can focus on improving the application completion rate during the application process.
In the final assessment of DreamApply’s impact, YZU’s experience stands as a testament to the value of investing in technology. The staff shared their firsthand experience: “From my side, I already benefit from DreamApply owing to the time it saves me. I could use a whole week (weekend included) to review all the applications, but now I can do that in one or two days.”
See Yuan Ze University live: https://yzu-apply.yzu.edu.tw/
About DreamApply
Founded in 2011 in Estonia, DreamApply is a leading innovation-driven EdTech organization whose product is an application management software that helps more than 300 educational institutions across 40 countries improve admissions, marketing, recruitment, financial aid management and other internal processes. Institutions that implemented DreamApply software have increased student enrollment by at least 30% and reduced up to 40% in application processing time.
DreamApply offers an easy-to-use and highly customizable software commended by many university staff and students. Our excellent reviews indicate that DreamApply is the solution to many challenges that universities and students around the globe face, as well as a testament to our founders’ dream to improve student access to education around the globe.
Book your demo today at https://www.dreamapply.com/request-a-demo
