NUS: Better Student Candidate Experience

When your university is ranked as one of the world’s top 15 universities, public interest in attending is high, meaning an extreme volume of applicants and high expectations to deliver the very best mix of student body: “Discover the world in one classroom”. 

The National University of Singapore (NUS) receives thousands of applications from all over the world. With limited seats available, applicant selection takes a team and leading edge technology to make sure the acceptance decisions made are fair, unbiased, diverse and secure.

Because of its high standings, NUS needs to be extra thorough in selecting the best candidates for its Master’s Degree programs. They endeavour to demonstrate how digitisation-driven and automation-driven process efficiency can drive best-practice outcomes. Regarding the Masters of Science in Human Capital Management & Analytics:

The HR function is changing rapidly. NUS is pioneering this new programme to prepare future leaders in the people function by bringing a blend of cutting-edge research in this domain with practical 

relevance to the industry.

 

Academic Director, Associate Professor Jayanth Narayana
MSs Human Capital Management and Analytics Programme

NUS needed a solution to quickly capture deeper personal insights to select the most inspiring future leaders. The solution also needed to enable curation to confidently ensure an enriching and diverse mix of gender, nationalities, ethnicities and industries. Written applications no longer suffice to determine an individual’s potential, drive, aptitude and attitude. And interviews waste a great deal of the admissions team and faculty time.

NUS worked closely together with Astronaut to automate the application process, customized to the specific needs of the different faculties at NUS. Their process now looks like this. 

1. Applications received via normal channels  
2. Applicants conveniently screens via Astronaut (with randomized questions), using asynchronous video to capture deeper, verified insights fairly and efficiently
3. Faculty reviews quickly and easily in their free time 
4. Admissions shortlist with high confidence

This enables each faculty to cultivate the best applicants for their programs in record time which benefit both the faculty and applicants. Applicants who are not accepted can be notified quickly and can apply to other faculty or universities without wasting time waiting for an answer.

The system also eliminates the need for applicants to go through a second round. The admissions team can directly share with their peers in faculty to review at their own convenience for a consensus decision making. Automating the selection process has made it faster, reliable and comfortable for applicants and the faculty end user. 

Importantly, ISO 27001 information security certification ensured that NUS had peace of mind, as did the supportive and available Astronaut local team.  

The Astronaut platform has given us a holistic view of each candidate, and allowed us to collaborate with faculty, so we can select the very best talent for our NUS cohorts.

 

Winston Wee
Head, Admissions (MSc Programmes) at NUS Business School