Rowan University - Transforming Freshman Registration with Rapid Insight

About: Rowan University is a public university with around 23,000 students, an 82% retention rate, and a 68% six-year graduation rate.

Challenge: 

As Rowan University’s freshman enrollment grew to over 19,000 students, the process of manually assigning students to appropriate courses and placement tests became unsustainable, and a massive strain on Testing Services, Advisors, and the Registrar’s Office. Staff had to manually evaluate student records, test scores, and course requirements - leading to a time-consuming and error-prone workflow.

Solution: 

Using Rapid Insight’s Construct, Bharathwaj Vijayakumar and Samyukta Alapati, along with their Data Analytics team, seamlessly connected multiple data systems, applied complex placement rules, and generated clean, actionable outputs for the Registrar and Advising teams. Construct’s visual, intuitive interface and enterprise collaboration tools made process development and maintenance fast, flexible, and scalable. The entire process of assigning students to placement exams and course sections now happens automatically, with stakeholders receiving a clean, organized dashboard (FIGS Dashboard) to work from.

Impact: 

Implementing the FIGS dashboard reduced manual efforts for Testing Services by 125 hours and saved student advisors an additional 90 hours, totaling 200+ hours, or over 5 weeks of FTE staff time saved annually. This effort eliminated human error in student placement and dramatically streamlined the registration process. Advisors, testing staff, and curriculum planners regained time for high-value work, improving both operational efficiency and the student experience.