WAAVblog

Welcome the WAAV portal system! We believe that this system should be much easier to use for everyone than our old system.  We are excited to enter our second cycle using this system and hope that you will find the enhancements helpful to you

What’s really great about this new system:

• No more WesNet login or password necessary – this was our number one problem with our old system
• The ability to control, for WAAV, when they do interviews on a timeline that is most convenient for them, as opposed to just responding to requests from students as they come
• Access to information about the student, such as what round they are applying (transfer, early decision, regular)
• The ability to sign up for and manage college fairs
• The ability to update your contact information and availability at any time

Below are step by step instructions on how to use your WAAV portal.  We would highly encourage you to read through these instructions and the rest of the FAQ carefully before calling or e-mailing us for help.  To see the images larger (and far more clearly!) just click on them.  We hope this will be helpful as you move through the rest of the interview cycle.

First, go to your WAAV portal via your secure link.  This link has been sent to you via e-mail, and will be sent to you also in our weekly reminder e-mails.  We highly encourage you to bookmark this link on your computer, smartphone, etc….wherever you might find yourself able to check your portal!  If you need your portal link, please let us know at waav@wesleyan.edu and we can resend it.

On this page you will see your name, currently location information we have on file for you (if this is not accurate, please let us know via e-mail ASAP!) and a list of students who have requested interviews.  These students have filled out a form via the Admission website saying that they wish to have an alumni interview.  The portal is set to display students who live within 50 miles of your location, although it is also limited to 15 students, so if you see students much closer to you than 50 miles only, then there are a number of outstanding requests in your area that are limiting your list.  This is generally only an issue in larger, metropolitan areas.

Quick tip: If you want the information on the screen to be bigger, so that you can see it better, click Control and + until it is the size you want it.  Control – will make it smaller.

To select a student, click on their name.  You will then see the box below pop up on your screen.  Next to “Round” will be information about whether or not the student is applying through Questbridge, Early Decision 1 or 2, Regular Decision, or Transfer.  If this is blank, the student is not yet an applicant.  This information will be helpful to you as the deadlines for early decision rounds arrive.

If you wish to claim this student, please click ‘Claim.” The student’s name will then move to your list of “My Interview Assignments” in your portal, as shown below.

The student will receive an automatically generated e-mail within 24 hours of your claim, with your contact information and instructions to be in touch to set up the interview.  You will be CCed on this e-mail as well.  You may reach out to the student on your own but there is no need to initially.  You can access their contact information by clicking on their name in your portal.

Once you have met with the student and completed the interview, click on their name under “My Interview Assignments” in your portal.  The window below will pop up.  Please click on “File Report”.  You will the navigate away from your portal.  Quick tip: if you want to be able to leave your portal open while filling out the evaluation form, please right click on the “File Report” link and the evaluation form will open in a new tab.

The interview evaluation form is shown below.  Please click the “This student did not show up for their interview/we were not able to successfully schedule an appointment” box for those students who never followed up on initial requests after trying to follow up with them, or didn’t show up for your appointment.  Please make sure all fields in the evaluation form are complete. These fields will prepopulate with your information and the student information.  You only need to fill out the Overall Evaluation rating and the Written Evaluation section.

For more information about what we want in an interview evaluation, please go here: http://www.wesleyan.edu/admission/volunteers/interviewing.html.

Once you complete and submit the form, you should receive confirmation that your form has been submitted.  The student’s status should change from “Pending” to “Completed.”  If it does not, please contact us at waav@wesleyan.edu.

When the evaluation is completed, that’s it!

If you completed the annual update this summer, you have already seen this, but we have enabled a feature in your portal that will allow you to update your contact information and manage your volunteering, such as your availability for interviews.  This link will be available at all times through your portal and we encourage you to update us with any changes as soon as possible to make sure that we have accurate records.

To access this feature, click on “Edit WAAV Member Profile” in your portal, which is to the right of your name at the top.  You will then see the following:

This form prepopulates with the information we have on file for you in our database.  Please make any necessary changes and click submit at the bottom. The city, state, and country information on the main portal page should reflect your new information.

NOTE: The text at the top of this update page will change once we have concluded our annual summer update and will be replaced with some more generic text.

NOTE: If you change your e-mail address, you will create a new portal link and will have to contact us to receive it.  

We hope this will make staying updated with us an easier and smoother process.  We will also share address update information with University Relations and the Alumni Association on campus so that we can keep accurate records across campus.

We have added a new feature to the portal which will tell you which admission dean is assigned to your area and their contact information.  This information should update if you move to a different area.  You can find this information on the top right-hand corner of portal screen, under the general WAAV contact information, where it says “Admission Dean Assigned To My Area.”

We hope this will be a resource for you as you work with the WAAV program!

We have added functionality to the WAAV portal that will allow you to view and claim college fairs the same way that you claim interviews.  It will list any college fairs available to claim within 50 miles of your address in our system.  You can claim fairs and then use your portal to complete the college fair report form after you attend the fair.

To claim a fair, enter your portal.  Underneath the interview area, you will see the following area “Help wanted with the following activities”:

To see more information about a college fair, click on it.  You will then see the following screen:

To claim the fair, click “Claim.”  The fair will then move into the “My College Fairs” section.

The fair will be assigned to you in our system and you will be sent a package with a banner and other materials before the date of the fair.  Once you have attended the fair, please click on the fair in your portal and then click “File Report.”

You will then fill out the College Fair Report, in which some of the information about the fair will prepopulate, and click “Update” when you are done.  This online form will replace the old paper College Fair Report Form.

We hope this will be a major improvement in our college fair process on both sides, and another way your alumni portal can be useful to you to enhance your WAAV experience.

In response to feedback we have heard from WAAV, we have added the date the student made their alumni interview request to the portal.  That way, you will be able to see which students in your area have been waiting the longest, and hopefully be able to request those students first.

Here’s an example of what your portal should look like now:

In any area of your alumni portal, you can use the Control key and the “+” key to increase the size of the text until it is at a size that you would like it to be to read it properly.  Similarly, you can use Control and – to decrease the size of the text.  This should work on a Mac or a PC.

If you have submitted your evaluation form, but it says “pending” and not “completed” next to the student’s name, then your evaluation form was not filled out correctly.  You need the student’s birth date, e-mail address, and full legal name on the evaluation form.  This information will clearly show when you go to file your report, on the pop up window on your portal.  We recommend that you right-click on “File Report” so that the interview evaluation form will open up in a new window, and you can reference the necessary information while submitting your evaluation.

If you have submitted an evaluation and the record still says “pending” please try again with the correct information from your portal.  If you are still having any problems, e-mail waav@wesleyan.edu.

If you have been corresponding with the student and some time has passed without hearing from the student and you do not have an interview time set, we would encourage you to reach out one more time to ask the student if they still wish to have an interview.  If you still do not hear from them, please go into your portal, click on “File Report,” then check the box next to “This student did not show up for their interview/we were not able to successfully schedule an appointment.”  Then, fill out your name, the student’s name and birth date at the bottom, and click submit.  We will record it in our system.

Tags: alumni portal, faq

Every couple of weeks, we will be checking on those students who are unclaimed.  For those students in areas without any or sufficient WAAV, we will reach out to them about the possibility of scheduling a Skype interview.  For those who do have alumni available in those areas, we will reach out to WAAV to get those students claimed.  This is why it is very important to claim as many students up to your interview limit as you can, so that we can clear out the requests in a timely manner.  There will be more requests and we move through the semester, but we expect them to come more gradually.

This is the last time we are conducting our annual shredding of application materials, as Wesleyan admission will be going paperless for this upcoming admission cycle!  This is an exciting time in our office as we transition many of our processes in order to move in this direction.  We hope this will be an upgrade in the experience for the students who are applying to Wes.

Tags: paperless