International Education Centers Need to Know this

By | June 12, 2020
Education Centers
Education Centers

As an employee of the international education service center, my main work is to help student clients apply for foreign universities.

Part 1: Traditional way I used for uni application

last year, I took charge of application work for over 20 student clients. Each student planed to apply for 5 Australian universities. For 20 students, I help them found out and determined unis and courses and submitted the course application. In the whole application process, I struggled by myself. What student clients did is listening to my guidance, preparing for tests (like IELTS, TOFEL, and GRE), providing the application required documents, and waiting for the university offers.

The most troublesome thing for me, the counselor of an abroad study agency, is filling in application forms for 20 students. I, with the name of my student clients, signed up and logged in the official university website and filled in the application form for each university. The way usually covers several pages, requesting applicant detail, educational background, uploading qualification certificates, study and work experience, and health and no criminal conditions. the application forms from different universities are similar, so I need to fill repeatedly in the same information. And I need to do the work for 20 students.

Another affair that cost me significant time and energy is helping students find out courses and universities that are suitable for them. Students seek help from my international education service center. For undergraduate students, I need to know of student’s subject interests, academic strength, and uni preference. For graduate application, I need to know of the specialization directions and course type (research or course work) students would like to engage in. Taking all those into consideration, I looked up the university website one by one, recording course information, such as course name, majors included, admission requirements, English requirements, intake time, application entry, and course link. After checking dozens of universities, I finally found out eight universities that suit students. Students finally determined the universities they desired to enroll, by choosing five among those eight unis.

This year, something changed. I get the faith that repetitive things should be done by a robot, rather than by humans. Why don’t we, workers for the international education service center, find a new method to avoid robotic work, hence significantly improving work efficiency? For university applications, can we not make it easy? 

Part 2: How do I make a shortcut for university application 

Smart as humans are, they have developed an internet tool to help for abroad study service agencies. CatEight it is. Want to know how I release excessive work burden?

1. Students fill in the application form by themselves rather than my doing it for them. 

I created 20 sub-accounts for my 20 students. Each of them could log in CatEight via their sub-account and fill in their profile info in this sub-account. Then, CatEight made it available that students submit the profile to me. Every agency consultant knows that personal profile info takes large amounts in the application form. While, by using CatEight, I realized add all the Applicant Details to the application form by one-click.

This is an excellent advancement of CatEight application. Students could fill in the applicant details requested by the Application form by themselves rather than filling in 20 pieces of applicant profile by myself. Besides, students’ profiles could be saved in CatEight. You can cite it easily for other affairs, like applying for another uni or a student visa. 

One student usually applies to more than one university. With CatEight, I do not ever need to fill in 5 pieces of application forms. CatEight application website allows me to apply for 5 (or more) universities via one application form. 

2. I am using the Course Finder of CatEight to search for courses and universities. 

Course Finder of CatEight covers almost all courses, including primary, secondary, and tertiary courses in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. You can utilize filters and keywords to find your course accurately. In the course detail page, almost everything about a course is listed, including entry requirements, tuition feet intakes, course links, and delivery locations. It dramatically improves your efficiency in finding out appropriate courses.

3. Tracking and recording the whole application process on CatEight

After submitting the course application via CatEight, you can see the application status, of pending, processing, accepted or not, and additional files for the application. This application process will last until you get your offers. 

During the process, I also use CatEight to record and manage student information, such as recording the income and expenditure of each student. All my activities on CatEight could be automatically recorded into the account log. I need to check the log if forgetting what I have done before. This function helps me manage the student’s case and quickly check their conditions.

Final words

Compared with the traditional way of university application, CatEight frees my time and energy. Technology indeed changes your life, and I believe internet tools like CatEight would get more and more popular among the international education service center. In this Internet world, be advanced with time! Embrace new things, use CatEight!