Are Your Transcript Processing Delays Driving Students Away?
The moment a prospective student submits their transcript, the clock starts ticking. Every day they wait for an evaluation is a day they could decide to go elsewhere. This is especially true for transfer students, who often have multiple institutions on their radar and need quick answers to make informed decisions.
But if your admissions team is stuck manually reviewing transcripts—deciphering different formats, calculating GPAs, and entering data by hand—it’s nearly impossible to keep up. The result? Processing delays that lead to frustrated students, increased melt rates, and lost enrollments.
Let’s break down why slow transcript evaluations are a problem and, more importantly, how to fix them.
The Cost of Slow Transcript Processing
1️⃣ Students Expect Fast Decisions
In a world where students can apply for a credit card and get approved in seconds, waiting weeks for a transcript evaluation feels outdated. Delays can cause uncertainty, leading students to choose institutions that process transcripts faster.
2️⃣ Transfer Students Are Especially Impatient
According to the National Student Clearinghouse, nearly 37% of college students transfer at least once. These students often apply to multiple schools and make enrollment decisions based on who gives them answers first. If your institution takes too long, another school will win their enrollment.
3️⃣ Enrollment and Revenue Are at Risk
A delayed transcript evaluation doesn’t just impact a single student—it affects your institution’s bottom line. When students withdraw applications or fail to enroll due to uncertainty, you lose tuition revenue and weaken your enrollment pipeline.
How to Speed Up Transcript Processing (Without Overloading Your Staff)
🚀 Automate Transcript Data Extraction
Manually reading, interpreting, and entering transcript data is inefficient. Freedom, Shamrock Solutions’ intelligent OCR tool, automatically extracts key data—such as courses, credits, and GPAs—from transcripts and integrates it into your SIS. This eliminates human error and dramatically speeds up the evaluation process.
🔗 Ensure Seamless SIS Integration
Freedom isn’t just about data extraction; it ensures that extracted data flows smoothly into your institution’s Student Information System (SIS), whether you use Ellucian, Jenzabar, PeopleSoft, or another platform. No more bottlenecks, no more manual re-entry.
⚙️ Reduce the Burden on Staff
Your admissions and registrar teams already juggle countless tasks. By automating transcript processing, they can focus on higher-value work—like engaging with students and improving enrollment strategies—instead of data entry.
📉 Lower Melt Rates, Increase Conversions
Faster transcript evaluations mean faster acceptance letters. The sooner students get confirmation of their transfer credits and admission status, the more likely they are to enroll at your institution.
Give Students the Speed They Expect—With Freedom
If your institution is struggling with transcript processing delays, you don’t have to accept it as the status quo. Freedom for Transcripts can transform how you handle evaluations, making them faster, more accurate, and more efficient.
💡 Want to see how Freedom can streamline your admissions process? Let’s chat! Contact us today for a demo.
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