#1: Inter-Application data request: Test Scores
Cathy wants to apply to Penn State as an undergraduate. She opens a web browser and surfs to the Penn State Admissions site. Clicking on Apply Online, she sees a login screen and clicks on Use Your CommIT Credentials. Cathy’s browser loads the application with a “Welcome Cathy” in the upper right corner. She then clicks on Provide Demographic Information and her name, address and related contacted information are populated in the form. (She had given prior approval to the CommIT Collaborative to share that information only upon her request.)
Cathy now scrolls to the academic credential section of the form. She notices instructions of “Click on the tests you would like to include in your application” and adds a check mark next to SAT, ACT, and AP History and AP Chemistry tests, but there’s no place to add her scores. She then clicks on “Check for scores.” Penn State checks what test scores are on file from the source organizations and prompts her with a window that says:
We have your SAT, AP History and AP Chemistry scores on file. Should we go get your ACT score now? You can always do this later, if you’d like to finish the rest of your application now.
Cathy thinks for a moment and decides to get this part finished now and clicks on “YES. Get my ACT score.” Because her federated CommIT Credentials are accepted by ACT, Cathy next sees a page on the ACT site that contains a question “Send your ACT score to Penn State now”? Cathy clicks YES and is prompted with a window: “ACT will send your score of 31 to Penn State now. You have 1 score request left in your 5 score pack. Shall we send future scores to Penn State on your behalf?” Cathy clicks YES and then NEXT and is sent back to the Penn State Application. She notices that the application now displays the verified ACT score (and verified SAT and AP scores).
#2: Post-Application data request: Test Scores
Cathy wants to apply to Penn State as an undergraduate. She opens a web browser and surfs to the Penn State Admissions site. Clicking on Apply Online, she sees a login screen and clicks on Use Your CommIT Credentials. After authenticating with her CommIT credentials Cathy’s browser loads the application with a “Welcome Cathy” in the upper right corner. She then clicks on Provide Contact Information and her name, address and related information are populated in the form. (She had given prior approval to the CommIT Collaborative to share information only upon her request.)
After Cathy completes and submits her application form the submission confirmation page provides a list of additional items needed to complete her application. The confirmation page also states that Penn State does not have the required SAT or ACT test scores on file and asks her to click on the tests she would like to add to her application. After selecting SAT she clicks on “Check for scores.” Penn State checks what test scores are on file from the source organizations and prompts her with a window that says:
Your SAT scores are available. Should we go get your SAT scores now? You can always do this later.
Cathy thinks for a moment and decides to get this part finished now and clicks on “YES. Get my SAT score.” Because her federated CommIT Credentials are accepted by SAT, Cathy next sees a page on the SAT site that contains a question “Send your SAT score to Penn State now?” Cathy clicks YES and is prompted with a window where she selects which SAT test she would like send to Penn State. After selecting the desired tests and clicks SUBMIT she is prompted with: “SAT will send the following scores to Penn State now. You have 1 score request left in your 5 score pack.” Cathy clicks NEXT and is sent back to the Penn State web page that confirms that her SAT scores have been received.
#3 Financial Aid Process
Eric, a recent MBA graduate, took out Federal and private student loans during both his undergraduate and graduate studies. In addition to the campus based loans that he is repaying to the University, he has loans being serviced by multiple entities and is having some difficulty in keeping track of his debt. He currently has a user ID and password to his University system and one for each of his three loan servicers.
Hoping that there is an easier way to manage all of these accounts, he talks to his former financial aid director and learns that his University is now a participant in the CommIT Collaborative.
Intrigued, Eric opens a web browser and surfs to the University’s financial aid site. Clicking on View My Student Loans, he sees a login screen and clicks on Use Your CommIT Credentials. Eric’s browser loads the application with a “Welcome Eric” in the upper right corner. Eric now clicks a button agreeing to certain privacy provisions required to access financial data and is almost instantly provided with an aggregated view of all of his undergraduate and graduate school loans…both Federal and private. Since the data is in real-time, Eric is able to determine his current loan balances, interest rates, payment play type, deferment, forbearance and view repayment histories as well as a wealth of other loan information from all of his loan providers.
#4a: Value of Common Access Control
Sam is a talented high-school junior who wants to apply to Penn State as an undergraduate. In looking at the entrance requirements, Sam sees that he must take the SAT and surfs to the College Board site to sign up for the test. Once on their site, he clicks on "register to take the SAT test in your area" and is prompted to set up an account with either ACT or CommIT Collaborative (we'll have a catchier name by then).
Sam looks at the information about the single sign on across his admissions experience that the CommIT advertises and decides that he'd rather use one userid/password. He also notices that he can control which groups can access his information held by organizations in the CommIT Collaborative. He likes that they can't connect his test scores with his academic record behind his back and send them off to schools to spam him with admissions junk. Sam also likes that the Collaborative helps him to apply to college by easing the transfer of his test scores and transcript to the schools of his choice. And, for a few extra bucks, he can click a box and authorize College Board and ACT to send all of his test scores (even scores that he hasn't signed up for yet) to his schools of choice without him having to think about it. He also notices that if he applies to another school, he can request that they be added to his "delegated organizations" on the CommIT site and they can request the scores too. Sam likes this setting up relationships with the schools and data providers. Saves a ton of time. No surfing back to each school or vendor to make it happen. Just add the organizations to the right groups and it happens in the back ground until he changes his mind and updates the groups.
That's really convenient.
#4b Value of Common Access Control
Betsy is a senior at Penn State and wants to apply to North Carolina State and Georgetown for graduate school. Starting on the NCSU graduate site, she notices the CommIT Collaborative logo and the blurb that it will help streamline her admissions process to Graduate School. Intrigued, she surfs to the CommIT site and clicks on "Apply to Graduate School."
She is asked to log in and chooses Penn State as a credential provider and logs into her home institution. Betsy is then presented with information about how CommIT sets up relationships between her undergraduate and potential graduate schools, so that she doesn't have to worry about requesting releases for all the information needed by NCSU and Georgetown---they will do that behind the scenes once she sets up the relationships here and requests it in the respective graduate applications. These relationships are only good for 6 months and expire after that time, unless Betsy sets it up for longer. She leaves the slider at 6 months, but doesn't want PennState sending information about her past that time. She should be in some program in 6 months!
To get going, Betsy see a list of CommIT participants and drags Penn State into the "information provider" box and Georgetown and NCSU into the "information recipient" box and clicks ok. The screen is updated with New Information Relationships and lists the two she just set up.
Next she surfs to NCSU's graduate admissions site and clicks on login and chooses PennState as her home institution. Because she's already authenticated (we're all federated right?), PennState passes her name to NCSU and NCSU displays "Welcome to NSCU, Betsy. What would you like to do?" Thinking for a moment, Betsy clicks on "Apply to Graduate School." A window pops up and asks "Have you defined Information Relationships with the CommIT Collaborative?" and Betsy clicks on yes. "Please wait while we are checking on your access management preferences." Several seconds later, the window is updated with "Access preferences found. Would you like us to download your PennState 1) demographic information 2) academic transcript 3) link to academic portfolio, 4) letters of recommendation, or 5) all of the above ?" Betsy clicks on all of the above. Several minutes later, her screen is refreshed with the NCSU Graduate Application filled in except for external contributions and other items not in her transcript. She also notices that the transcript and letters have been download and portfolio link provided.
WOW, is that cool! Saves me a ton of work.
#5: Admissions Admin and IT
Vince manages the Admissions IT shop of Happy Valley State, a large multi-site university, and sits down at his desk with his coffee. He signs online, thinking about the admissions cycle so far and smiling about how well he's sleeping this year compared to last.
What's changed? HVS is now a member of the CommIT Collaborative. This year, they purchased 270,000 "suspect" names from CollegeBoard as usual and loaded them in their CMS. Next SAT and ACT scores started coming in from students who indicated HVS as one of their institutional choices when taking those tests. In the past, HSV ran a very complex, homegrown matching program to ensure the scores were matched up to the right records, but no more. Vince doesn't have to worry about whether the matching algorthym is correct or if, as a result of the process, the system created yet another record for someone. (Vince hates duplicate records.) Any information that's been touched by CommIT can optionally include a way to correlate information under the right identity record, if the user allows.
And now prospects are starting to use their strong federated CommIT credentials to fill out the HSV application. Vince knows who is in process of appying and whether HSV has information about them already, because the CommIT can pass that correlation indicator to HSV if the user enables it. Once submitted, the system can match up the application with the right record everytime. No getting bad leads on mis-matching SSNs anymore and having to track them down. HSV doesn't use SSN in their admissions process at all now except for financial aid.
In addition to saving money there, HSV also doesn't give out accounts to 75,000 individuals every year for access to the online admissions portal and then throw away 60,000 of them because only 15,000 of those students attend. CommIT handles all the authentication and no more password reset (by HSV anyway).
Vince leans back with his cup of coffee and puts his feet on the desk, gazing out over the soccer fields, relaxed.
Note: We could do a scenario that includes duplicates at the CommIT level or what the policy for name changes would be and how changes get propagated across CommIT. ;)