FAQ

There are three types of partnerships associated with EngineeringCAS: engineering societies, institutions and an advisory board. Liaison has strategic partnerships with many engineering societies. The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) has embraced the solution and has made EngineeringCAS available to all their member schools as a member benefit. We work closely with ASEE to bring awareness of EngineeringCAS and the many benefits of joining the community to deans, directors, admissions personnel and faculty.

We also have partnered with other engineering societies, like the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), who are bringing awareness of EngineeringCAS to their individual members, specifically undergraduate students of engineering who represent the pipeline to graduate schools of engineering.

The partnerships Liaison forms with engineering schools are critical to a successful EngineeringCAS. As more and more schools participate in the CAS, applicants have more choices. We view the relationship we have with each school as a true partnership.

Finally, Liaison has assembled an advisory board dedicated to EngineeringCAS. This board consists of deans, directors and admission management from a diverse set of engineering schools. The board serves as the eyes and ears to engineering education for EngineeringCAS and helps us plan for the unique requirements of engineering enrollment.

Yes, more than 31,000 programs on over 1,000 college and university campuses leverage the same SaaS platform. Liaison manages more than 3,000,000 applications annually.

To optimize your use of EngineeringCAS, it should serve as the primary application for your programs. Secondary or supplemental applications that are useful for your individual workflow can be maintained.

That said, there are significant benefits for the institution in using EngineeringCAS as your primary application, including:

• A single source for purview over all graduate program applications.
• Customized application for each college and/or program
• Creation of dynamic application workflows in Liaison’s cutting-edge review and processing
• Reduction of effort to process and package applications for
• Reduction in applicant email and phone support.
• Reduction in your application processing
• A single data source to manage for integration to your CRM, SIS and other systems.
• Data for all graduate programs available from a single source.

Evidence from participating schools suggests programs that participate in a CAS may expect an overall increase in applications of 10% or more, but individual increases will likely vary.

Yes, EngineeringCAS provides applicants the ability to research and apply to multiple programs. Research suggests, due to the competitive nature of admissions, 62% of prospective students already apply to multiple programs. In this regard, a CAS is a value-added service to the applicant and to the participating programs. However, applicants accessing EngineeringCAS via your website, will be taken directly to your programs first. They would need to take an additional step to view other programs in EngineeringCAS.

Liaison encourages programs eligible to join affinity-based CASs to participate in the services provided by their professional associations. Liaison will work with institutions interested in EngineeringCAS to determine which programs are eligible for affinity-based CASs and which are a fit for EngineeringCAS. Your institution will have an overview and access to all data in EngineeringCAS and in all other CASs on campus.

Since EngineeringCAS provides administrative services, such as transcript collection and scanning, phone support and application document collation, to all participating programs, EngineeringCAS may give you the opportunity to reallocate your resources. You will likely be able to move away from clerical and administrative tasks to more valuable endeavors such as recruitment, marketing and relationship building. We are aware of no situation where staff have been eliminated due to a CAS.

Not necessarily. The $58 processing fee for EngineeringCAS applications in many instances can be offset by eliminating the redundancies that exist in today’s current model, such as transcript request fees, foreign credential evaluations, mailing fees, etc. Surveys of applicants repeatedly show that the benefits of applying through a CAS justify any fees associated with this service. In order to ensure access, EngineeringCAS will commit up to 5% of all application processing fees to an application fee waiver program in order to be certain no applicants are excluded.

You can still collect your current application fees. However, many institutions find that the cost offset of outsourcing the application management and document processing functions included in a CAS offering (scanning, letters of recommendation, applicant support etc.) create additional opportunity to reclaim budget, or FTE headcounts, who are freed up to focus on more impactful enrollment projects and initiatives. Liaison will collect your application fee with the processing fee and dispatch the payment to your university or you  can collect the application fee yourself.

EngineeringCAS does not make any admissions decisions. EngineeringCAS is simply a mechanism to gather the data that you need to make admissions decisions from applicants. EngineeringCAS will provide data and documents in a ready-to-review format as well as tools like rubric scoring, faculty evaluations and others that can be used in the evaluation of the applications. The service will not interpret or evaluate the eligibility of any applicant. The selection and admission of all applicants is the sole prerogative of each college or department.

Liaison is committed to forming a partnership with participating campuses, by providing planning, onboarding, training and oversight. A training program and comprehensive customer service component will be significant parts of EngineeringCAS for your campus.

Participating schools need not change the current application workflow process nor purchase any special software to review applications. Through available application programming interface (API) tools, all applicant data can be imported into existing systems and processes. The intent is to minimize any impact to application reviewers. For more information, see the questions below regarding data integration and supported systems. For institutions wanting to enhance the current review and reporting process, all participating institutions will have access to WebAdMIT, a comprehensive application management tool provided at no cost.

EngineeringCAS is a comprehensive web service for the application, and WebAdMIT is a SaaS for programs to use for application configuration and management of the application, evaluation and/or exporting data and PDFs. The service will provide data and training materials in formats that can be used by current/legacy systems already in place. The advent of web-based technology allows for the rapid transfer of data in universal formats. Some schools participating in other CASs upload the CAS information into current systems, while others use the WebAdMIT software provided by the application service to review applications, then transfer the final data to their SIS.

Yes, EngineeringCAS is CRM agnostic. Liaison provides WebAdMIT to review and evaluate the application, as well as communicate with the applicant.. The program can choose to use it and transfer data to the CRM, simultaneously use WebAdMIT and the CRM for communication or bypass WebAdMIT entirely for review and communication with the applicant. Our integration specialist will consult with you on the right decision for your programs.

EngineeringCAS is configured so as soon as an applicant has expressed interest in a particular program, the institution will have the ability to contact the person. The institution can decide when to contact the applicant — right away to start recruiting, at some point during the application process and/or when waiting for the application to be completed.

EngineeringCAS will not slow down your application process. In fact, most programs will realize an increase in speed to completion and packaging of the application for review as transcripts received by Liaison are validated, scanned (if print) and appended to the submitted application on the same day, then made available to enter your unique workflow process.

Data can be retrieved electronically on demand at any time. Additionally, exports can be scheduled to automatically pass data to your CRM service and/or SIS.

International students will apply in the same manner as students in the U.S. Liaison, the provider of EngineeringCAS, has a partnership with World Education Services (WES) and ECE, the leaders in international credential evaluations, to manage/verify transcripts from foreign institutions; these evaluations can be brought into the application with the push of a button. The institution also has the choice to partner with another transcript evaluation provider or evaluate the transcript in-house. Evaluations, other than WES or ECE can be uploaded to the application.