A Web-based Pre-Admission Evaluation for
Graduate School Application
Charlie Obimbo & Nhi Tonnu
Dept. of Computing and Information Science
ABSTRACT
In this paper we discuss the implementation of a Web-based system
capable of handling on-line pre-admission evaluation for prospective graduate
applicants. This has been implemented for the Computer Science Graduate Program
at the
Keywords: automated self-evaluation, graduate school application
1. Introduction
The number of applicants for graduate studies in the past two years in North American University has dramatically increased for a number of reasons. Some of the reasons include:
· the need to have highly qualified personnel in certain areas of industry,
· companies downsizing or closing with layoff due to a decline in the economy the past few years after the incident of September 11th.
Currently,
many universities around the world provide online application systems for the
undergraduate programs making admission process more accessible to these
students, however, only a number of them provide online application systems for
graduate programs. The diversity of
Most online
application systems are limited to downloadable application forms for graduate
studies admission. In
In general, students with degrees or close to finishing their degrees would appreciate knowing if they qualify for the MSc program. Under normal circumstances, prospective students can peruse through documentary qualification criteria set up by the department on brochure or on-line. Though information contained in these documents may be helpful, they may not be adequate in informing applicants of their qualification status. This causes the applicants to either send in their applications and hope for the best or contact the department or faculty members directly through phone or e-mail concerning their application process.
By using our system, potential applicants can have an up-to-date and correct picture about their qualification status while saving money, time and disappointment by unnecessarily submitting an application and receiving a “reject letter” at the end. For graduate admission committee and faculties, they can avoid processing applications that don’t meet the departmental or university criteria, and replying to excessive E-mails from these applicants.
2. Overview of the Pre-Admission Evaluation System
In the
department of Computing and Information Science at the
The objectives of the Pre-Admission Evaluation (PAE) system are:
· To build an environment for prospective applicants to allow them to efficiently self-evaluate before the actual application submission.
· To allow faculty members to quickly view the pool of promising future candidates of graduate students, and therefore efficiently make early admission decisions before the paper-based documents come to their desk.
The PAE system consists of two major components: a database that holds details of the potential applicants’ data and user accounts, and a collection of programs that assess applicant’s qualification status and generate feedback in HTML format.
In general, the PAE system is designed for three categories of users:
· potential applicants – who can use the pre-assessment by filing in the pre-designed form and the collected data will be processed by the system program to aid them on the admission decision.
· Faculty members – who are mainly interested in the data provided by the potential applicants.
· Graduate Coordinator who has more privileges than faculty members. He/she is responsible for creating new user accounts, resetting user passwords or deleting useless database records, etc. The graduate coordinator can view all the potential applicants’ saved information while faculty members can only view data of potential applicants whose qualification meets department admission requirements. In addition, the graduate coordinator is responsible for generating statistics and reports at the end of admission period.
3. Design and Implementation
In this section, we discuss some issues in the design and implementation of the web-based pre-admission evaluation system (PAE).
3.1 Development Tools
The PAE system is based on the World Wide Web platform. This is because this platform is broadly available, easy to use, and has low distribution costs. By utilizing the infrastructure of the Internet, many of the potential applicants from around the world could easily connect to the department site to learn more about the offered graduate program and receive useful feedback on program admission requirements and qualifications.
For deploying dynamic Web application, CGI [1] is one of the most popular tools and is supported by almost all Web servers. CGI defines the specification for transferring information between a Web server and information resources. A CGI program accepts parameters from an HTTP request, passed by the Web server, then generates and returns an HTML page. However, the major drawback of CGI approach is that the Web server needs to send a separate CGI process for every request it receives. This is time consuming and expensive in terms of server’s memory and system resources [2].
Java Servlet[3], on the other hand, is designed to overcome the drawback of CGI and is increasingly being considered as the alternative to CGI program. Java servlets are more efficient, easier to use, more powerful, more portable, and cheaper than traditional CGI. Since the Servlets are implemented in Java, they inherit the features of this programming language. The Servlets can do everything CGI scripts can do [4]. Additionally, although a Servlet runs in the same address space as the Web Server does, it is safer than CGI because of the protection mechanism obtained from the Java virtual machine (e.g. Sandbox).
3.2 Pre-Admission Evaluation Algorithm
The assessment process at the PAE system is based on the weight-point system. By carefully assign weight points for each of the program graduate admission criteria, we developed pre-admission evaluation algorithm to efficiently provide timely feedback to the system’s users.
Depending on the program admission requirements of any particular year, certain criteria may carry more weight points than others. During our designing phases, we were careful not to construct a model where certain groups of potential applicants may not be fairly assessed. For example, prospective students with GRE scores would be more preferable during the admission assessment process. However, since GRE is not a requirement for admission to the Master’s program, potential applicants with GRE scores are not evaluated using the same scale as ones without GRE.
Furthermore, the weight-point system is expected to be updated from time to time by the department as the Graduate admission criteria change.
3.3 Database
The PAE system was developed to integrate seamlessly
with the Computing and Information Science department Website, which runs on
Apache HTTP Server [5]. For the database system, MySQL [6] was chosen because
it is open source, efficient, robust , and has multi-user capabilities.
The analysis of the potential applicants’ input data
is fundamental to this online system. According to the received data and result
of the assessment, we specify three main stages for each record entered in the
database table:
·
Fail: Potential applicants do not meet our
program admission requirements. Where
possible, feedback is provided on how to qualify (e.g. Absence of TOEFL).
·
Pass
with GRE: Potential
applicants who have provided their GRE scores. Under this category, there are
four sub-level stages of “excellent”, “good”, “average” and “minimum” depending
on the outcome of the analysis process.
·
Pass
without GRE: Potential
applicants who have the admission requirements, and have not submitted a GRE
score (this is optional for the Master degree program at the
Information is collected in the database, and this can be used to advertise (by sending brochures and application packages) to potentially successful candidates, when necessary.
3.4 User Interface
User Interface is an important part of any Web-based application. The goal of designing the PAE system is to provide the potential applicants an easy to use, useful, and efficient system. The PAE system mainly depends on the HTML form to provide users a set of questionnaires based on the CIS MSc program admission requirements. After receiving input from users, the PAE system is responsible to return to users the results of the pre-assessment.
Figure 3.1: Pre-Admission Evaluation System Architecture
Figure 3.1 depicts the different components of our system. A client input form is passed using an HTML form through the Web Server to a servlet program which then processes it. The result obtained after processing is entered into database system upon the approval of client (whenever client is a potential applicant) and is sent back to the client via an HTML page.
We use several web technologies such as JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets in attempting to provide efficient dynamic data-driven web application which static HTML pages cannot provide. Cascading Style Sheet is used to provide visual continuity as the users navigate the site. We deploy JavaScript for checking the user’s common errors such as leaving important fields blank. This input validation provided at client-side will decrease the server-side computation workload and improve database performance.
3.4 Authentication and Access Control
To use the pre-admission assessment system, authentication is not required. Interested applicants can follow the link from the graduate program admission page. However, for accessing potential applicant’s private data, authentication and access control are used. The authentication capability is provided by the username and password verification mechanism. Each faculty member is provided with user account and default password. Users must go through a login interface and after successful password validation the user is then directed to a homepage with respect to the user’s access level. Access control restricted to the system is enforced by implementing a simple Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) strategy [7].
4. Discussions and Conclusions
The use of on-line application systems for undergraduate and graduate study has increased dramatically in recent years. To provide feedback and aid for potential applicants in graduate study decision, we developed an interactive Web-based graduate pre-assessment system. The goal of the system is to provide a simple, user-friendly interface and dynamic data content serving potential applicants and faculty members in the application process.
The benefit of the on-line pre-admission assessment system is the timely feedback provided to all levels of users. Applicants receive almost instantaneous feedback of their qualification status while faculty members have timely access to list of future promising prospective students.
5. Future Work
One aspect that can be improved on is to create for potential candidates accounts, with login IDs, and passwords, so that they can enter their data in more than one sitting, and have the ability of modifying it if necessary, within a limited period (say 6 months).
6. References
1. Felton M., “CGI Internet Programming with C++ and C.” Prentice Hall, 1997
2. Boutell T., “CGI Programming in C & Perl” Addison-Wesley Developers Press, 1996
3.
Hunter, J., Java Servlet
Programming, O’Reilly & Associates Inc.,
4. Kuhlins S. and Korthaus A., “Java Servlets versus CGI - Implications for Remote Data Analysis,” Classification and Information Processing at the Turn of the Millennium, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft, 1999.
5.
Bowen R., “Introduction to
Apache Server,” ApacheCon Europe
Proceedings,
6. MySQL Manual Online, httlp://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/
7.
David F. Ferraiolo and D.
Richard Kuhn, "Role-Based Access Controls," Proceedings of the 15th
NIST-NSA National Computer Security Conference,
Author
Charlie F. Obimbo & Nhi Tonnu
Dept. of Computing and Information Science
http://www.cis.uoguelph.ca/~cobimbo