The admission form builder article covers what you ask families to fill in. This article covers what happens after they submit — how the application lands in your dashboard, how your team reviews it, and how you communicate a decision.
Reviewing applications is a Premium feature. Schools on Pro can have inquiries and bookings but can't run a structured admissions process through the dashboard.
What happens on submit
When a family clicks Submit on the final wizard step:
- The application status flips to Submitted. The family sees a confirmation screen and receives an email saying you've received their application.
- Your team gets a notification (in-app + email) within ~1 minute, routed to whoever is configured for admissions notifications.
- The application appears in your Admissions tab with status Submitted and a "needs review" badge.
If you've configured a payment step (application fee), the family pays before the final submit, and the status passes through Fee paid on its way to Submitted.
The application detail view
Click any application from the Admissions tab to open the detail view. Three things to understand about the layout:
- Left column — a vertical table of contents listing every step of your application form. Click any step to scroll to it; the active step is highlighted. Useful for long applications where you want to jump straight to "Parent 2" or "Medical info."
- Center column — the application content, organized by step. Each step is a card showing the family's answers verbatim. Uploaded files appear in their own gallery (see Document review below).
- Right column — the decision panel + internal notes + lifecycle rail. This is where your team coordinates.
The lifecycle rail
The right column shows a 5-stage rail summarizing where the application is in your review process:
Needs review → In review → Decision pending → Offered → Closed
The 13 underlying status values (Draft, Submitted, Fee paid, Documents complete, Under review, Assessment scheduled, Interview scheduled, Decision pending, Offered, Accepted, Enrolled, Waitlisted, Rejected, Withdrawn, Incomplete) map onto these 5 stages so you have a quick sense of activity without parsing specific statuses.
You can move the application through the rail manually from the status dropdown, or it advances automatically when you take a specific action (e.g. proposing an interview → Interview scheduled, sending a decision → Offered/Waitlisted/Rejected).
Document review
Every file the family uploaded (passport scan, school report, recommendation letter) appears in the Document gallery at the top of the center column. For each file:
- Filename + file type icon
- "Open" button — opens in a new tab using a signed URL valid for the current session
- "Download" — same, but with a download header
Files are scoped to the application: only your team sees them, and they're tied to the family's specific application (not their overall account). If you delete the application, the files go with it.
For schools that want to print or send files to a third party (e.g. forwarding a medical record to a school nurse), open + save locally. The signed URL won't work for someone else's browser session — you have to download and re-share.
Internal notes
The Notes panel is where your team coordinates without the family seeing anything. It's a rich text editor (Tiptap) — you can add formatted text, bullet lists, links, and headings.
Use notes for:
- Triage observations ("Strong academic record, weak essay — push to assessment")
- Phone call summaries ("Spoke to mother on Friday — they're comparing us against Le Rosey, deciding by Oct 30")
- Team coordination ("Anna to review medical info; David to call parents to discuss boarding")
- Assessment scores or interview notes ("Maths assessment: 78%. Interview: confident, articulate, clear motivation for boarding.")
Notes are append-only in spirit — don't delete past observations when a decision is made. The historical trail matters for defensibility ("why did we reject this family?") and for the next admissions cycle if the family re-applies.
Communication with the family
The Messages tab inside the application is a two-way thread between your team and the family. The family receives each message by email; their replies sync back into the thread (same mechanism as the family CRM — Family CRM basics covers the email sync behavior).
A few message templates are available to speed up common exchanges:
- Request documents — when something is missing
- Schedule assessment — when you want them to come in for an entrance test
- Schedule interview — see below
- Clarification — generic "we need more info on X"
- Welcome enrolled — onboarding message after enrollment
Templates support variable interpolation — ${studentName},
${parentName}, ${schoolName} are filled in automatically.
You can also send freeform messages.
Interview scheduling
When you click "Schedule interview" in the message composer, a booking proposal modal opens. Pick one or more slots from your calendar; the family receives a message with those options.
The family can:
- Accept one of the proposed slots → the booking is created and confirmed
- Counter-propose a different time → the proposal bounces back to you with their suggested slot
- Decline → no booking, the message thread continues
Interview bookings appear in your Bookings tab alongside campus tours and video calls. They're linked to the application so the booking detail view shows which application it's connected to.
For families who want a phone-call interview rather than in-person or video, propose using the phone-call meeting type (configured in Bookings and the tour calendar).
Assigning and tagging
For schools with multiple admissions staff, you can assign each application to a specific team member from the right column. The assignee gets notifications for activity on that application and the application appears in their "assigned to me" filter on the Admissions tab.
Tags let you label applications without changing their formal status — e.g. "scholarship candidate," "international," "sibling of current student," "high priority." Tags are free-text and per-school; create whatever taxonomy fits your process.
The decision
When you're ready to decide, the Decision panel offers three options:
- Offer — a place is available. Optionally attach a decision letter PDF URL (host elsewhere, paste the link) and set an offer expiry date.
- Waitlist — keep the application open but no immediate offer. Required to include a note to the family explaining where they stand.
- Reject — declined. Required to include a note explaining the decision (or use the standard polite-decline template).
When you submit the decision:
- The family is notified by email + in-app.
- Their application timeline shows the decision (with the note you wrote, and the letter URL if Offer).
- The application status advances to Offered / Waitlisted / Rejected.
- For an offer with an expiry date, the family sees a countdown on their side ("offer expires in 14 days").
You can resend an offer if you need to change the letter URL or extend the expiry — same panel.
After the decision
- Offer accepted — family clicks Accept on their side. Status moves to Accepted. Use the "Welcome enrolled" template to initiate onboarding. Status finalizes at Enrolled once the family completes any post-acceptance steps (deposit, paperwork).
- Offer expires unaccepted — status flips to Withdrawn after the expiry date passes.
- Offer declined — family clicks Decline. Status moves to Withdrawn. Optional: send a "we wish you the best" follow-up message.
- Waitlisted family wants an update — they message through the thread. Reply when you have news (no movement, freed-up spot, etc.). Move to Offered when a spot opens.
Operational rhythms that work
After watching schools run this for a few cycles, three patterns separate the smooth processes from the chaotic ones:
- Weekly triage meeting. 30 minutes, every Monday, two people. Walk the Admissions tab filtered to "Needs review" and decide for each: assess / interview / reject. Doesn't have to be long — the goal is no application sitting in "Needs review" for more than a week.
- Decisions in batches, not one-by-one. Especially for the September admissions cycle, do all your "Decision pending" reviews in one Tuesday-afternoon session and send all the decisions on the same day. Spreads the family-side ripple evenly rather than randomly.
- Internal notes before message templates. Always write what you think internally before sending the family message — the note becomes the audit trail; the message is just communication.
Common mistakes
- Skipping the notes panel. Without notes, the next person to open this application has no idea what conversations happened off-platform. Treat notes as mandatory after any phone call or team discussion.
- Decisions without a written rationale. Even for offers, write a one-line note explaining why (e.g. "strong academic, prior boarding experience, fit with our community"). When the same family applies for a sibling 3 years later, you'll thank yourself.
- Letting "Decision pending" pile up. Families notice. The expectation is that "Decision pending" lasts 1-3 weeks, not 2 months. If you're going to take longer, send an update message explaining the timeline.
When to escalate to us
Email admin@swissprivate-schools.ch if:
- A family insists they submitted an application but you don't see it (we can check the submission log)
- You need to reopen a Rejected or Withdrawn application (we can reset the status)
- A decision letter URL needs a longer signed-URL window for the family to access (we host PDFs separately; contact us to set up hosting if you don't have somewhere to put yours)
- You want to bulk-decline a cohort of applications at the end of a cycle (we can run this server-side)
We respond within 2 business days.