So, You live around here?
AUTOMATED RESIDENCY DECISIONS
MADE EASY…
Overview
• Existing processes for collecting student
residency information. What works, and what
doesn’t?
• Identifying potential solutions
• Development and implementation of the
Residency Smart Application (RSA)
Collecting Residency Data
EXISTING ADMISSION APPLICATION PROCESSES
Admitting Offices at UW-Madison
Office of Admissions and Recruitment – Undergraduate (UW System
application)
College of Engineering (UW System application)
School of Nursing (UW System application)
Department of Continuing Studies (UW System application)
Graduate School (Custom application)
Graduate School of Business (Custom application)
Law School (Vendor provided application)
School of Medicine and Public Health (AMCAS)
School of Veterinary Medicine (VMCAS)
School of Pharmacy (PharmCAS and supplemental application)
Various Department Programs (Custom applications)
UW-System Admission Application
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Residency questions are included in the online admission
application
Automated decision-making logic built in to determine residency
status based on the information provided by the applicant
The system application is able to make residency determinations
for approximately 80% of applicants
Requires running and maintenance of a separate PeopleSoft
Application Engine load process to import the electronic residency
data
Requires a set of customized records and pages within PeopleSoft
to enable residency staff to review the applicant data
Custom Admission Applications
(Grad, Grad School of Business, Professional Schools)
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Residency questions are sometimes built into the application. If
not, applicants fill out a PDF Record of Residence
No pre-population of existing student data
No automated decision-making logic. Applicants are required to fill
out the entire form even if the data is not relevant
Requires running and maintenance of a separate SQR load process
within PeopleSoft to import the electronic residency data
PDF Record of Residence forms are linked and stored in ImageNow
to meet data retention requirements
Residency counselors must evaluate all admission applications to
make an accurate residency determination
Existing Technical Infrastructure
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Custom PeopleSoft records to store residency data collected on the
UW System admission application and customized applications
when applicable
PeopleSoft SQR process to load the residency data into the
residency records
Custom PeopleSoft page to display the residency data for review by
Residency Counselors
General Stats
Over 40,000 students enrolled
annually
2012-2013 Academic Year
Total residency decisions: 64,099
Automated Decisions: 51,350
Manual Decisions: 12,749
Identified Business Need
With a residency staff of two, we needed to find a way to
reduce the number of applications that require manual
review.
The UW System admission application does a good job of
making automated residency decisions, but it’s only used
for undergraduate and non degree-seeking special
students.
We needed to automate the residency determination
process for the remaining applicants.
Fixing the Problem At Hand
IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
Project Team
A project team was formed to define requirements, document the
process flow, and define residency determination logic.
Members included:
• Two Residency Counselors
• Admission office representative
• Project manager
• Residency staff supervisor
• Java developer
• PeopleSoft developer
Proposed Solution
Build a web-based application specifically designed to collect and
analyze residency data with the following features:
• Accessible by a variety of applicants from multiple admitting
offices
• Make residency determinations “on the fly”
• Pre-populate with existing student data (when possible) to
eliminate redundant data collection
• Present users with only the questions needed to make an
accurate residency determination…no unnecessary data
collection.
• Integrate with PeopleSoft via web services to retrieve existing
student data and to pass back applicant residence data and the
residency determination (if made)
Residency Smart Application (RSA)
DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION
Application Overview
The Residency Smart App (RSA) facilitates the entry
of information by applicants to determine their
eligibility for resident status for tuition purposes
under Wisconsin Statutes. RSA draws from
multiple data sources to reach a residency
determination, including PeopleSoft, the system
the student is being redirected from, as well as
directly from the student.
Technical Infrastructure
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Application written in Groovy using the Grails framework, a JAVA
overlay
Runs in the Apache Tomcat servlet container hosted by UW
Madison Division of Information Technology (DoIT)
Data is stored in a DoIT hosted Oracle database
NetBeans and IntelliJ IDEA IDEs, but the project is not locked into
any single IDE
Dependencies and build are handled by Apache Maven
Requirements and issue tracking using JIRA
PeopleSoft Customizations
Component Interface Web Services
– One used to pre-populate the application with applicant biodemo data when available
– Second web service created to allow for writing the collected
data back to custom staging tables
Staging records
– Temporary staging area for applicant data to be held until it can
be matched with an admission application
App Match SQR
– Recurring process used to migrate staged data to the permanent
Residency Record of Residence in PeopleSoft once an admission
application is completed.
Data Flow
Applicant Entry Points
For maximum flexibility, the project team decided
to allow entry into the application from a variety
of other systems:
• PeopleSoft Student Center
• PeopleSoft Reentry Customization
• External Admission Applications
Required Data Elements
When redirected to RSA from an
external admission application or
from PeopleSoft, there are a two
required fields:
• admissionApplicationNum
• admitTermCode
Additional optional fields accepted:
• Emplid
• academicCareer
• firstName
• middleInitial
• Birthdate
• Citizenship
• visaType
• Addresses
• residencyDecisionPostbackUrl
• userRedirectUrl
Imported Data Elements
If an applicant has previously attended UW
Madison, and the student emplid is known, the
residency application will call a component
interface web service that is exposed from
PeopleSoft to pre-populate the app with existing
bio-demo data.
This eliminates the need for redundant data entry
and reduces the total application completion
time.
Decision Logic
Logic
- continued
Logic
- continued
So, how does it work?
RSA IN ACTION
Initial Questions
If an applicant indicates that they are not a legal Wisconsin resident
and that they have not recently moved to the state for full-time
employment, the application makes a ‘Nonresident’ determination
and no additional information is required.
General Info
If an applicant indicates
that they are a Wisconsin
resident, they are
prompted to enter
additional information.
Based on the information
provided, the applicant is
then directed to the
appropriate pages for
additional data collection.
Parent Data
Parent/Guardian information can be a
determinant of WI residency status
for tuition purposes for all applicants
regardless of dependent status or
age.
Parent/Guardian details are required
in order for an applicant to be
considered a ‘Resident’ under a
specific section of the state statute.
Details include:
• Citizenship status
• State income tax information
• Voter information
• Occupation
• Addresses
Applicant Information
If the applicant does not qualify for
‘Resident’ status based on the
parent/guardian information provided,
then further information is required for
determination of status
Higher Education Details
All institutions of
higher education
currently or
previously attended
must be listed by
the applicant. Dates
of enrollment are
important in
determining
residency status.
Employment
Similar to the higher
education information
physical presence in
Wisconsin for the full
twelve months preceding
enrollment is an
important factor in
determining residence for
tuition purposes.
e-Signature
Prior to displaying
the residency
determination, the
applicant must first
electronically sign
the application. This
is the final step in the
application process.
Residency Determination
After submitting the
application, the final
residency
determination is
displayed along with
contact information for
our Residence for
Tuition office.
At this point the
applicant can either be
redirected to the
external system that
directed them to the
RSA or they can simply
close the app.
SUMMARY
Early Adopters
Graduate School of Business – Fall 2013
Law School – Fall 2013
Reentry Applicants – Summer 2013
School of Education – Outreach Programs – Fall 2013
Graduate School – Fall 2013
Measures of Success
Referring back to the 2012-13 residency statistics, our residency
counselors manually evaluated 12,749 residency determinations.
When fully adopted, we estimate that the Residency Smart
Application will be able to reduce that by 70%.
Applicants will no longer be required to submit information that has no
bearing on their residency status which reduces the overall time to
application completion.
Admitting offices will no longer need to maintain substantial
customizations to their admission applications in order to collect
residency information.
Aaron Apel
adapel@em.wisc.edu
QUESTIONS?