Background: High Volume and Manual Friction
Central Connecticut State University is a significant institution handling comprehensive evaluation work for a total student population of approximately 11,000. As a comprehensive regional public institution, their transfer team manages evaluation for all populations, including first-year freshmen with early college credit and continuing students seeking summer course approvals.
The university enrolls over 1,000 transfer students annually, processing several thousand transcripts to maintain that volume. We spoke with Patrick Tucker, the University Registrar, whose team recently consolidated these previously decentralized operations into a dedicated Transfer Services Unit to better manage this high-volume intake.
The Challenge: The Cost of Speed
Central had a strong commitment to the student experience: they wanted to turn around a transfer evaluation within 24 hours of a student being accepted.
However, before modernizing their infrastructure, achieving this speed required a completely manual workflow. For students transferring with 60 to 90 credits from multiple institutions, evaluators were manually typing 20 to 30 or more courses per student.
To keep up with the volume and meet their 24-hour SLA, the university had to deploy 8 admissions counselors just to manage the data entry.
“All of that work was manual. It was constant data entry, every day!”
This approach worked, but it incurred an opportunity cost. Highly skilled admissions counselors were spending time doing data entry when they could have been recruiting and admitting students.
The Solution: Automated Extraction and Ingestion
Central implemented Raptor to automate the extraction of academic history, grades, and course titles directly from PDF files. To ensure operational elasticity, they partnered with BeBravo to build a real-time API integration into their Banner student information system.
The success of the integration stemmed from a shared operational language. Because the teams at both Smart Panda Tools and BeBravo have direct experience running registrar and admissions offices, they bypassed the typical IT translation gap. The resulting infrastructure was mapped natively to Central’s exact business processes.
“I appreciate that the teams understand how a university operates and what our needs are. It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. They really took the time to understand how we operated and ensured that the solution met our unique needs.”
The infrastructure reads complex parameters, such as whether a student holds an associate’s degree, to trigger specific transfer rules natively. This allows the university to push decision-ready data directly into Banner automatically.
“Once the data’s staged in Raptor, BeBravo’s integration helps get it into your student information system so easily. It’s really just as simple as the push of one button.”
Operational Results: 8 Roles Consolidated to 1
By automating data extraction and ingestion, the rote data entry previously shared by 8 counselors is now managed primarily by a single staff member overseeing the automated workflow.
Central successfully decoupled their enrollment processing from headcount, allowing them to consistently hit their 24-hour turnaround times without relying on brute force.
“This has taken the burden off of this work from our admissions counselors and our admissions team. It’s really allowed us to move where we have one staff member who primarily manages the evaluation workflow.”
This shift from data entry to system oversight effectively ended the reliance on manual stamina to maintain the university’s competitive service standards.
“In terms of staff time devoted to data entry, reading things off a transcript and typing them, all of that is essentially gone.”
Strategic Impact: Proactive Transfer Advising
Eliminating the manual bottleneck enabled the transfer services team to shift their resources toward proactive transfer advising.
Staff can now evaluate unofficial transcripts for prospective students, such as those exploring options from Connecticut State Community College, before they officially apply for admission. This operational readiness ensures that prospective students understand how their credits will transfer immediately, significantly improving enrollment yield and the student experience.
“When you’ve seen the power of Raptor and how it really leverages automation and workflow efficiencies, you don’t ever want to go back to the dark ages of manual data entry.”
[Raptor] has taken the burden of this work from our admissions counselors and our admissions team. It’s really allowed us to move where we have one staff member who primarily manages the evaluation workflow.
—Patrick Tucker Registrar, Central Connecticut State University.