Interest Tracking
PORTAL is designed to track two levels of interests—on inquiry and after the interview. The idea is that the interests narrow and become more useful to the school as the child moves through the admission process. The inquiry interests are generally gathered during the inquiry process, either online or over the phone. The values that are entered, either from the Input screen or the Interview tab, create records in a separate table called INTERESTS. The table distinguishes between the two categories of interests.
Some schools look for specific interests, while others allow for an open range of values. Generally these are sports and art choices, but they may be favorite subjects and extra-curriculars. Multiple values can be added for each child, and the screen is designed to display the first five with a scroll bar if there are others. The interest fields can be searched for any value and will return a match regardless of where the value sits in the list. The fields in the Inquiry Interests do not automatically transfer to Interview Interests. If a school does not want to distinguish between the two or track the difference, that is fine but schools should be consistent in using the same field to track interests.
Once a child has interviewed, often the interests are either narrowed down or completely changed. A child, whom the parent introduces as a rising soccer prospect, may volunteer that he or she is mostly interested in theater. The office can elect to notify coaches, teachers and activity coordinators from any of the three categories, depending on the school’s custom. Automated mailings and emails can be customized either in-house or with iR help.
CAUTION: Schools have a variety of interviews, visits, tours, testing days, re-visits, etc. PORTAL assumes that the major event is the child interview and this is what is tracked via the Interview field. If the school uses a different term for the event, the field should not be changed. The label can be changed but not the field name. The Interview field and date field are used to drive the activity statistics reports. Changing these fields or not using them will result in inaccurate reports.
Other Schools Tracking
You can also track what other schools the child is interested in or has applied to on the Interview screen. You can track multiple schools per child.
‹ Interview Management Testing Information ›
