Online Response Options to Decision Letters

Overview

Decision letters may be published in the portal after the school makes their admissions decisions. When parent of applicants log in to their portal an orange notification banner appears at the top of the application checklist page, indicating the application decision is ready to be viewed. Parents may click on the notification banner to view the decision and respond, depending on school configuration.

Schools can decide how parents should proceed with their enrollment decision by choosing from a variety of online response options that either allows parents to view the decision, view and make their enrollment decision, or view and confirm the admission offer. If a school would like to allow online response, the decision letter must be published in the portal.

The process for configuring online response is separate from publishing admissions decisions in the portal (see the Admissions Decisions: Configuration & Publishing article for specifics on decision letter publishing). Consider the following questions to determine which online response option is right for both the school’s admission and enrollment process:

1. How are admission decision letters made available to parent of applicants and/or applicants?
   Schools must decide whether they will send decision letters by mail, email, or make them available electronically through the Admission Portal.
2. How should parents of applicants be able to respond to or accept the admission decision to finalize their enrollment decision?
   Schools must decide if enrollment decisions (applicant’s decision about the school) should be made from the context of admissions (i.e. from the Admission Portal) or from the context of enrollment (i.e. from the Enrollment homepage).

Online Response Options

There are four options for replying to decision letters online:

1. No Decisions
   Decision letters are not available to parent of applicants or applicants in the Admission Portal.
2. View Decisions
   Parent of applicants or applicants can view the decision letter in the Admission Portal, but not respond.
3. View Decisions & Accept Offer
   Parent of applicants can view the decision letter and make their enrollment decision online from the Admission Portal by accepting or declining the offer.
4. View Decisions & Confirm Offer
   Parent of applicants can view the decision and indicate their enrollment decision by confirming the offer. Parent of applicants are then directed to continue to Online Enrollment where they will make their enrollment decision and begin the enrollment process.

Note: Only parent of applicants can view the admission decision from the Admission Portal and continue straight to Online Enrollment to make the enrollment decision. This is because Online Enrollment is a parent-centric process, unlike the Admission Portal which allows both parent of applicants and applicants to log in and complete their applicant checklist items. Enrollment must remain a parent-centric process because of the many decisions that need to be made at the time (e.g. is my child a day boarder or full-time boarder?; do I want to sign up for a tuition payment plan or pay-in-full?).

No Decisions

The school does not want to allow parents of applicants or applicants to view or respond to admission decisions online.

The online portion of the admissions process is complete once the applicant completes all checklist items. Schools will send admission decision letters either by mail or email.

The only configuration necessary for this step is confirming that application statuses (e.g. accepted, denied, etc.) are not viewable online or available for online response. Configuration for application statuses is available from the “Application Status” link under the Admissions section on the System homepage. Confirm all checkboxes under the “Available Online” and “Allow Online Response” are unchecked for all application statuses.

View Decisions

The school only wants to display decision letters to parents of applicants or applicants.

When schools publish admission decision letters in the portal, parent of applicants and applicants will be notified that their application decision is now available when they log in to their portal. They will only be able to view the decision letter, not respond.

Schools may decide which application statuses (e.g. accepted, denied, waitlisted, etc.) they would like their applicants to be able to view online. From the “Application Status” link under the Admissions section on the System homepage, select the “Available Online” checkbox for all Application Statuses that should display online when decisions are published to applicants.

View Decisions & Accept Offer

The school wants to display the admission decision to parent of applicants and allow them to make their enrollment decision online by accepting or declining the offer. 

Parents will view the decision letter through the Admission Portal and continue to the online response by clicking on the blue  button. They will then make their enrollment decision by clicking “Accept Offer” or “Decline Offer.” Once they have accepted the offer their enrollment decision on their application record will update to “Accepted Offer.” The Enrollment process will then begin when the school sends the Enrollment welcome email.

For all application statuses that are viewable online, the “Available Online” checkbox should be selected from the “Application Statuses” link under the Admissions section on the System homepage. Also from this same query, for all application statuses that schools want parents to respond to online (i.e. accepted, waitlist, denied, etc.), the “Allow Online Response” checkbox must be selected. This will enable the “Accept” and “Decline” button in the Admission Portal. 

Admission Portal Configuration: The Admission Portal (v2.5) configuration requires that the "Enable ORE" option be set to "Yes," which is configurable by Veracross staff. 

View Decisions & Confirm Offer

The school wants to display the admission decision to parent of applicants and allow them to confirm their enrollment decision by continuing directly to Online Enrollment.

For schools that want their parents to move straight from admissions to enrollment, parents should make their final enrollment decision from the Enrollment homepage. Allowing parents to confirm the admission decision on the Admission Portal, but accept it from Online Enrollment provides parents with an opportunity to preview the contract and tuition amount information before their final decision is made.

After the admission decision has been made by the school, parents will log in to their Admission Portal and view the decision letter. Clicking on the  button on the decision letter page will connect them with the Enrollment Decision page. Parents will select “View Offer” and then “Confirm View Offer” to confirm the admission decisions. Once they select “Confirm View Offer” a link to “Continue to Online Enrollment” will appear. Clicking on this link will automatically log them in to the Enrollment Portal where they can start the enrollment process by completing the enrollment checklist items. A parent of applicant’s enrollment decisions is “made” when the contract is signed. The newly enrolled student’s enrollment decision status will update to “Accepted Offer.”

Because this process moves directly from the Admission Portal to Online Enrollment the Enrollment Portal must be open for all accepted applicants. Before portals can be opened, all accepted applicants must have Person Enrollment records created (if they have not been already). To create Person Enrollment records, run the “Create Missing Person Enrollment Records” Admissions menu item. Running this procedure will create Person Enrollment records for all accepted applicants for the active admissions year. The Enrollment Portal can then be opened per person enrollment record by checking the “Is Portal Open” checkbox as they are accepted to the school. If the Enrollment Portal is not open at the time parents confirm the admission decision, when they click on the “Continue to Online Enrollment” option an error message will appear. All application statuses available to confirm from the Admission Portal should be configured to “Allow Online Response” from the “Application Status” link under the Admissions section on the System homepage.

This particular option for online response is opt-in only. If you would like parents to move directly to Online Enrollment after confirming the admissions decision from the Admission Portal, contact your Account Manager. 

Admission Portal Configuration: The Admission Portal (v2.5) configuration requires that the "Enable ORE" option be set to "Yes," and also that the "Consider offer" option also be set to "Yes", which is configurable by Veracross staff. When this is configured appropriately, the essential launch workflow is: after making a decision to accept an application, also set the appliation's "Enrollment Decision" to "Considering Offer." This data state enables the enrollee to proceed to the Enrollment Portal directly from the admission portal in as few clicks as possible.