Law School M-Reports Dashboard
From Business Intelligence
Contents |
[edit] Project Contact
If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Joe Castillo (jgcastil @umich.edu).
[edit] Project Description
The Law School and MAIS collaborated on a pilot project to create an M-Reports dashboard for the Law School Admissions Office. The dashboard calculates numerous metrics critical to the admissions process and displays the results in tables and graphics with varying levels of detail. The project is unique in terms of its analytical scope: it created new aspects for tracking the characteristics of the incoming class, as well as budget tracking and “after-the-fact” analyses of the aid strategy’s efficacy. Part of Phase II of the project is testing the possibility of increasing the authority of individual units on data management projects, and it provides the Law School with a higher level of autonomy.
[edit] Business Need
- Obtain more accurate and timely data about an incoming class to inform decisions regarding future admissions for that year
- Adjust aid policies between aid years or even adjust within an aid year.
- Streamline the report generation and distribution process, and minimize repetition of similar tasks.
- Compare matriculation rates at various statistical levels, pinpointing successes and failures and benchmark techniques to support admissions and merit aid for future classes.
- Access timely, customizable reports regarding admissions and merit aid more often and more easily.
[edit] System/Application & Data Sources
This is an M-Reports application that uses data from HEODS, which is updated daily.
[edit] Project Purpose, Scope, & Deliverables
The purpose of this project was to replace a manual process, which generated a weekly admissions and merit aid report during the admissions season, with an automated application that provides on-request reports populated with data that is updated daily. The team built a dashboard that:
- Provides analyses results in both tabular and graphical formats.
- Lists information about students for the coming year, such as the number of students receiving merit award offers and their median test scores.
- Includes corresponding data from the previous year to facilitate trending analyses.
- Lists percentages commonly used in Admissions: Selectivity, Offer Rate, and Yield.
- Features the drill-down functionality inherent to M-Reports, which in this application leads to student-level detail for the features and characteristics selected.
- Provides touch-of-a-button analysis for obtaining answers to questions such as, “Are we under-offering aid to 169 LSATs as compared to last year?” or “Since Selectivity is down from last year, but Yield is up, can we expect to surpass our previous offer totals?”
- Identifies the difference between the target number Admissions expects to offer for a particular award and the number offered to-date. (Target numbers are entered and stored in MReports through a data entry screen, as is the formula for calculating the Index. This feature is new to M-Reports and has a potentially broad range of applications for other units.)
- Provides an analysis of Feeder Schools that answers questions about the number and characteristics of students that come from a given undergraduate institution.
- Includes a Budget Page so that users can conduct various analyses related to the allocation of money, which is key for reviewing aid strategy.
[edit] Audience/Users
- Law School Admissions Office staff (analysts and programmers) use the application to create reports
- Law School senior staff including the Dean use the reports to make admissions and aid policies and decisions.
[edit] Project Sponsors/Partners
- Law School
- MAIS