As the first medical school in the state, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) John Sealy School of Medicine (JSSOM) has been a leader in the field of medical education for more than 130 years. Today, that rich history is only one part of the school’s strong national reputation. With research and clinical facilities across four campuses and seven hospitals, an impressive alumni network, and a dedicated community engagement program working with underserved and uninsured populations, there’s a lot to attract prospective students to UTMB.

“We’re very intentional about nurturing a collaborative and community-oriented campus environment,” shared Dr. Pierre W. Banks, Assistant Dean of Admissions & Recruitment at the John Sealy School of Medicine. “When we’re assessing prospective students, we want to ensure that, in addition to having the academic aptitude to complete the curriculum, they’re also a good fit for our culture.”

With more than 5,000 applicants per year, assessing prospective students for those key skills and traits is no small task. Following a holistic review of the initial and supplemental applications, grades, and MCAT scores, UTMB School of Medicine invites up to 1100 applicants to participate in a virtual Multiple Mini Interview (MMI)

“In 2022, we faced a significant number of issues delivering our MMI on Zoom so we started to look for another online platform that could help us improve the process,” shared Dr. Banks. “Then we heard from UAB’s Heersink School of Medicine how they were seeing such success with Kira Talent and we decided to take a look for ourselves.” 

Getting interview results to the admissions committee faster

“The streamlined process in Kira’s Live Interview platform has shaved off a tremendous amount of time from our MMI setup and delivery,” shared Lisa Pearce, the Program Manager of Admissions & Recruitment at UTMB John Sealy School of Medicine. “With Kira’s Admin Dashboard, I can easily monitor our applicants and interviewers from start to finish, checking their status updates to ensure that they’re online and ready to go. If a reviewer is missing, I can quickly share the link and have someone else jump in and fill that spot.” 

“Each interview day before Kira, we would end up with several cases where we had to reschedule interviews,” added Dr. Banks. “In contrast, with Kira, we rarely need to schedule a retake and if then, it was because an applicant had gotten time zones confused or we had an interviewer who was stuck in a clinic. It was never a platform issue.”

“Reducing the number of makeup interviews has alone saved us more than 20 hours of work per cycle.”

“The ability to set a timeframe within Kira for interviewers to finish inputting their scores and notes has also helped expedite the reviewing process,” added Dr. Banks. “At the end of their MMI circuit, interviewers have one hour of bonus time to submit their notes and scores in Kira.”

“By the morning after the interview, we were already able to pass results on to the committee for review.”

“We had all of our reviews completed much earlier this year, which allowed us to get pre-match offers and early offers out to applicants faster,” continued Pearce. “With our old process, we were often waiting two to three weeks to get results to the committee. To avoid the confusion of having multiple windows open on one screen, interviewers were writing their notes on paper and then needed to find the time in the following weeks to transcribe and submit scores on the online rubrics.”

Purpose-built for bespoke interviews

“In addition to saving us time, Kira has also made our lives in admissions a lot easier,” Pearce shared. “Kira has so many unique features that solve all those little problems you run into every day during interview season.”

“Kira’s single sign-on has been especially helpful for faculty who may not have a lot of experience with technology,” added Dr. Banks. 

“A challenge with our old process was that interviewers needed several different windows open on their screen throughout the interview,” Pearce explained. “If they accidentally clicked out of one window, it was a logistical nightmare to get back in again.”

“With Kira, you don't have to remember multiple passwords, log into multiple platforms, or juggle multiple links or windows for the video, scoring, and notes. There’s one place for everything” Dr. Banks continued.

“Even the small features, such as being able to broadcast a message to all interviewers or applicants or quickly copy and share individual access links, have made managing MMIs for over 1,000 applicants virtually effortless,” Pearce added. 

Making it happen on a tight timeline

“We had been finding workarounds for the challenges with our old process for some time, but it finally came to the point where we realized that it just wasn't going to work for us going forward,” Pearce shared. “Unfortunately, that breaking point came only two weeks before our interviews were due to start.”

“We had already been in touch with Kira, so I reached out and asked if we could make this transition happen on a two-week timeline,” Dr. Banks added. “The Kira team immediately jumped in to help.”

“It was a crazy crunch time, but the communication from the Kira team was amazing and they worked with us to make the whole transition manageable,” Pearce continued. “We gave them a rundown of what our MMI looks like and what questions we use and they took care of the rest. The platform is also incredibly intuitive, so after a quick walkthrough I was able to go in on my own and tweak what Kira had built for us to match how we were already conducting our interviews.”

“We were able to transition our entire MMI process into Kira within a two-week timeline.”

Easily iterating to continuously improve your interviews

“Looking back, it was a very easy transition,” Pearce shared. “Even undoing all the training that we had done with interviewers on our old platform and then retraining them with Kira ended up being quick work. The Kira platform is very user-friendly, so faculty were able to transition quickly into the new process.”

“It’s also very flexible, so we were able to fit Kira to our existing MMI structure rather than the other way around,” she continued. “Even after everything was built, we could go in and make whatever changes we wanted.”

Impressing applicants with the premier platform

“Applicants often tell us that their experience interviewing with UTMB was the best across their entire medical school application process,” shared Dr. Banks. 

“I've spoken with applicants after interview day who also participated in an MMI for another school hosted on Zoom and other platforms, and they all commend us for using Kira,” continued Pearce. “They all feel that Kira offers a much easier, and more seamless experience.”

“Kira is known amongst the applicants as a premier platform. That’s a reputation that we want to be associated with and that we want to continue to build.”

“We were excited to be the first medical school in Texas to deliver our MMIs on Kira, and it seems like we’ve started a trend,” shared Dr. Banks. “It feels like every time I talk to a peer school now, they tell me that they’re looking into Kira. I can honestly tell them that both our faculty and applicants would do nothing but recommend it.”

At UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) program, employability is top of mind from admissions through to graduation. 

Boasting a 97% post-graduation employment rate, the school leverages its strong relationships with top employers in the United States and wide network of more than 42,000 alumni to help students get their foot in the door at hundreds of leading financial institutions globally. The continued success of those relationships, however, relies on the continued success of the MFE students in their careers. To help ensure that they’re enrolling the right students for the job, UCLA Anderson MFE relies on Kira Talent.  

Identifying top applicants by assessing employability in the admissions process

“Our emphasis on employability and soft skills begins in the admissions process with our video assessment,” shared Leanna Cortez, the Interim Executive Director for the Master of Financial Engineering at UCLA Anderson School of Management. 

Presenting applicants with mathematical problems, the MFE admissions team assesses how applicants are able to approach solving the challenges in real time. 

“It’s not just about them reaching the correct answer, we want to see how our applicants handle the stress of having to solve a problem on their feet and if they can communicate how they arrived at their result,” Cortez explained. 

“It's an essential component of our application process,” explained Jeff Credidio, Manager of Admissions & Recruiting for the Master of Financial Engineering program. “There are a lot of candidates with perfect test scores and impressive grades and, on paper, they look the same."

"How they communicate is the differentiator, not only for us but for employers.” 

“An Asynchronous Assessment in Kira Talent has allowed us to efficiently assess those key skills in the application process,” he shared.

Replacing time-consuming Skype and in-person interviews

“Prior to Kira, we were gathering these critical insights through a combination of Skype and in-person interviews,” shared Cortez. “This disparate process not only created inconsistencies in the applicants’ experiences but, from a scheduling perspective, it was incredibly time-consuming.”

“We receive applications from all over the world, so juggling time zones presented a significant challenge during interview season,” Cortez explained. “During the admissions season, we frequently worked 12-15 hour days to keep up with the volume of applicants and align our team with applicants’ availability.”

“We're a small team, so each component of our admissions process needs to be designed with our limited bandwidth in mind,” she continued. “When we started looking at alternative solutions to conduct our admissions interview with, reducing the time spent on purely organizational tasks was a key focus — we needed to make the process more efficient.”

Since 2016, UCLA Anderson MFE has conducted their admissions interviews with an on-demand video assessment in Kira Talent.

“By using an Asynchronous Assessment, we’ve eliminated the entire scheduling component of the interview process, saving us countless hours of work each admissions cycle."

Optimizing resources for a small admissions team

“With Kira, you can invite multiple applicants to complete their assessment with one email blast,” Cortez explained. “The assessment is available online and on-demand, so not only do we not have to try and find a time that works for both applicant and interviewer, but we’re no longer limited by the number of interviewers we have available at a given time. Multiple applicants can complete their assessments at the same time, from anywhere in the world.” 

“In that way, Kira allows us to optimize our resources and interview significantly more candidates than we could with a traditional interview,” she added.

Learn how Kira helped McCombs School of Business increase applicant yield by 30%

For UCLA Anderson MFE's admissions committee, that means that they're getting better insight into the wider applicant pool.

“Our admissions committee has been really impressed with the process in Kira," Cortez shared. "Coming from a wide variety of professional backgrounds working in admissions, they've experienced first-hand all sorts of systems and ideologies."

“Of the many different admissions processes that we’ve been a part of, we feel that Kira’s platform has provided the smoothest user experience all around.”

Mitigating bias and strengthening scoring reliability with an accessible assessment

The on-demand nature of Kira’s Asynchronous Assessment helps UCLA Anderson MFE increase the number of applicants they can invite to interview, while also helping the admissions team increase the reliability of their reviewing process.

“With a live interview, you’re relying on the notes and initial appraisal of the one reviewer in the room,” explained Credidio. “Kira enables us to easily rewatch and share applicants’ responses, which helps us ensure that we’re making our admissions decisions based on thorough and accurate assessments of the candidates.”

“If a reviewer is at all unsure about an applicant’s response, they can ask another team member to watch the response and give a second opinion,” added Cortez. “If a reviewer’s notes are unclear or the admissions committee is on the fence, they can watch the responses themselves.”

“The full access we have to applicants' responses has been a game changer, helping us mitigate bias in our admissions process and strengthen the reliability of our evaluation.”

As one of the top schools in the United Kingdom (UK), the admissions season is always a very busy time for the central admissions team at the University of Surrey. Boasting a top 5 ranking for student satisfaction and a beautiful campus just outside of London, Surrey attracts applicants from all around the world.

“We receive around 60,000 applications per year across both postgraduate and undergraduate courses,” shared Rory Ellison, the Admissions Transformation Manager at the University of Surrey. “Around 36,000 of those applicants typically are international students, most of whom need a visa to come to the UK.”

“Universities are granted licenses from the UK government allowing them to sponsor students for a visa, and the onus is on the school to stop people from abusing that system,” Ellison explained. “In the past few years, there's been a significant increase in fraudulent applications across the UK where non-genuine students attempt to use the universities to attain a visa.”

Each university designs their own process for determining whether or not an applicant is a genuine student. Known as credibility interviews or intention to study interviews, online video calls are a common choice, however, managing an interview schedule and juggling multiple time zones can make the practice extremely taxing on the admissions team.

“At the University of Surrey, we use an Asynchronous Assessment in Kira Talent to conduct credibility interviews before we sponsor them for their student visa,” shared Ellison. 

Rising to the challenge of cross-continental interviews

“For around 18 months before we shifted our credibility interviews to Kira, we were conducting them on Zoom,” Ellison explained. “Scheduling and rescheduling interviews, coordinating with applicants, conducting the interview and then making an assessment and a final decision on their candidacy, the process with Zoom created a significant amount of additional work that our team had to absorb.”

“One of the key factors that we struggled with was time zones,” he added. “These applicants are coming from all over the world, and it was becoming quite a challenge to schedule a time that worked for the applicant as well as for our staff.” 

“Ultimately we had to ask for assistance from other teams to get the decisions in on time,” continued Ellison. “We weren't going to get any more staff resourcing in that area so we knew we needed to find a way to streamline the process and make it both scalable and sustainable for the long-term.”

Building a sustainable interview solution with significant time-savings

“With Kira, we’re saving around 375 hours of work each cycle.”

“The various components of our Zoom process, from coordinating with applicants to actually conducting and scoring the interview, added around 600 hours of work per cycle for our admissions team,” explained Ellison. “Breaking that down, we spent around 45 minutes per applicant conducting credibility interviews. With Kira, that’s been reduced to 15 minutes per applicant.” 

“These time-savings come from Kira’s streamlined interview process and ability to automate the most time-consuming tasks,” he continued. “We simply send the invites out from Kira, and the platform takes care of the rest, automatically setting deadlines according to our rolling admissions schedule, sending reminder emails, and tracking applicants’ progress. When a candidate completes their assessment, it’s automatically assigned to one of our reviewers and they’re able to watch and score the videos on their own schedule.” 

Learn how Imperial College of Business is able to turn around enrollment decisions in 3-days with Kira

Once their interview process was set up in Kira, inviting additional candidates to complete a credibility interview added minimal work for the Surrey admissions team — enabling them to easily scale the process as needed.

“This flexibility has translated into significant benefits for our applicants as well,” shared Ellison. “Whereas before we were frequently dealing with no-shows and requests to reschedule, since transitioning to Kira, we've had very few applicants fail to complete their credibility interview before their deadline.” 

“Kira has transformed our credibility interviews, helping us turn around decisions faster than ever before.”

Powering a more thorough reviewing process

“Our whole team is thrilled with the new process,” shared Ellison. “In addition to the time it’s put back in their days, they're seeing the added benefit of not having to make a snap decision during the interview.”

“Whereas real-time interviews force reviewers to make the decision there and then, with Kira, the applicant's responses are all recorded,” he explained. “Reviewers can go back and rewatch a video or get a second opinion if they have any questions or concerns.” 

“This is especially important when you're assessing an applicant’s intention to study because it can be subjective,” he stressed. “You don't want to make a snap decision.”

“Kira’s Asynchronous Assessment allows us to take advantage of these time-savings while actually bolstering the thoroughness of our credibility interviews.”

An intuitive platform backed by industry-leading support

“From day one, Kira has made the whole experience so seamless and accessible for our team,” Ellison shared. “The platform itself is intuitive, so it took very little time for the team to get comfortable working within the various dashboards and features.”

“We use Kira’s Asynchronous Assessment Builder to manage most of the setup ourselves,” he explained. “The various options and customization are all clearly laid out, so all it took was going through and ticking which options we wanted to use, dragging videos into the box to upload, and we had an assessment designed to our exact specifications.” 

“Whenever we did have a question, the Kira team was there to help,” he continued. “They scheduled regular check-in calls to make sure we were on track and feeling confident, they’re super responsive whenever I reach out, and, most importantly, they’re there to assist our applicants if they have any questions or technical challenges.” 

“Bringing Kira into our admissions process has saved us significant time and stress,” added Ellison. 

“From the intuitive platform to the support we receive from the Kira team, our new process allows our staff to concentrate on higher value tasks that benefit the university and our applicants.”

Here at Kira Talent, client feedback takes centre stage. So in a year like 2023, which was marked by some significant industry shifts, we’re thrilled to say that our clients are feeling better than ever about their decision to use Kira in their admissions processes.

This year, schools located in more than 116 cities around the world submitted feedback on their Kira experience. From time-saving stats to process insights, learn more below about how admissions teams like yours used Kira to power their admissions processes in 2023.

  1. The Kira enhancements that clients loved this year
  2. How schools are using Kira
  3. What clients appreciate most about their Client Success team
  4. What’s top of mind for admissions leaders in 2024?
  5. Kira Client Experience Reports from other years

The Kira enhancements that clients loved this year

From Single Sign-On support to automated reminder emails, Kira released a ton of new tools and features in 2023 to help clients better manage their workload by eliminating repetitive manual tasks.

What’s new at Kira Talent

Discover the latest features and upgrades released at Kira Talent and what they can do for your admissions team.

Learn more

 

How schools are using Kira in 2023

In this new era of online admissions, there are many different platforms through which a school can deliver an interview or assessment. And while our features and functionality may check all of your boxes, it’s the comprehensive client experience, from onboarding setup to ongoing support, that makes Kira stand out from the crowd. But don’t just take our word for it — earning a 76 Net Promoter Score (NPS) in 2023, we can officially say that our clients are crazy about Kira!

A metric that asks clients if they would recommend a company to a friend or colleague, the NPS ranges from -100 to 100, with tech titans like Google (NPS 58) or Netflix (NPS 67) falling just a little shy of Kira’s amazing results.

Each year, we dig a little deeper into these results to understand what it is about the Kira experience that our clients find so valuable. 

Clients most frequently named “Reducing time spent organizing and scheduling interviews” as the top benefit of having Kira Talent supporting their admissions process. 

Efficiency was a key concern for schools in 2023 with the reduction of reviewer fatigue and time spent reviewing applicants both ranking amongst the top benefits for Kira clients. With a quarter of Kira clients saving more than 50 hours of work per cycle, it’s hardly surprising that time savings top the list!

At 63%, the majority of Kira clients have reduced their workload by more than 20 hours per cycle with Kira Talent.

NYU SPS gets applicant insights delivered

To assess thousands of applicants on a tight timeline, NYU SPS is using Kira’s Reviewer Services to make more informed decisions while saving 3,000 hours of work per cycle.

Read more

Whether programs wanted early insights into their applicant pool or needed a more flexible and efficient method of conducting final-round interviews, Kira was able to deliver this enhanced efficiency at various stages of the admissions process.

45% of clients have brought Kira into the early stages of their admissions process to help them efficiently screen their applicant pool to identify the cream from the crop. For 47% of clients, Kira fulfills the final step of the admissions process, allowing them to meet their top candidates in real-time or on demand. 

For many schools, these stages of the admissions process are nothing new. 51% of programs used Kira to replace an existing in-person or virtual interview in order to improve the applicant experience, reduce workload, and bring increased structure and integrity to their traditional process.

Another 35% of schools added a Kira interview or assessment as a net new step of their admissions process, allowing them to gain additional insights while staying within their timeline and budget.

In fact, 51% of Kira clients were able to invite all applicants to complete an interview or assessment in Kira without overwhelming their staff and faculty. 

What clients appreciate most about their Client Success team

While the features and functionality of Kira’s cutting-edge platform may make the first impression, the hands-on support provided by our dedicated client success team is what makes a lasting impression.

With an incredible 9.5/10 average client satisfaction rating, we know that schools love their dedicated Kira Client Success team. This year, we dug a little deeper and asked clients to share how the client success team helps make their Kira experience and overall admissions process better.

Working with clients to build out custom questions, competencies and rubrics, 66% of clients mentioned how their Client Success Manager (CSM) and Client Success Specialists (CSS) were proactive in helping them get the most out of Kira, with many saying that they felt like an additional team member.

Yale SOM celebrates ten years with Kira Talent

“Kira, as a partner, is very innovative, always thinking about what's coming next and sharing ways in which other schools are approaching challenges that are similar to ours.”

Read more

 

What’s top of mind for admissions leaders in 2024?

“Maintaining diversity in our programs.”

“Delivering a consistent and fair admissions process within our budget constraints.”

“Preventing applicants from using AI in ways that decrease the authenticity of their application.” 

“Implementing a rolling interview process.”

Click here to learn more about why we publish this data and how we collect and use client feedback

Kira Client Experience Reports from other years

Kira Client Experience Report 2022

Kira Client Experience Report 2021

Kira Client Experience Report 2020

At the Yale School of Management (Yale SOM), educating tomorrow's business leaders means more than teaching them the ins and outs of running a company. 

“The mission of Yale SOM is to educate leaders for business and society,” explained the Assistant Dean for Admissions, Laurel Grodman. “We aim to develop leaders who can think broadly about the challenges that we, as a society, face in an increasingly complex world.” 

“We look for students who will benefit from a multidisciplinary, multifaceted education that encourages them to think beyond the traditional business school boundaries of accounting and finance and marketing and learn how to problem solve on a more macro level,” she continued. “That central ethos of focusing not just on the bottom line, but also on the impact that business has on society, and the relationship between the two, has remained central to who we are as a school and what our alumni go out into the world to do.”

Identifying which of the thousands of yearly applicants will thrive in this unique program, however, requires insight into many different aspects of a candidates profile. 

“A guiding principle of our admissions approach is to give candidates multiple ways to demonstrate their strengths and readiness for the program,” Grodman shared. 

Since 2013, Kira Talent has been helping Yale School of Management gather those insights to identify and enroll the best and brightest in their applicant pool. 

Taking the next step towards greater efficiency

“Each cycle, we receive around 3,500 applicants for the MBA program,” Grodman shared. “That’s a lot of application materials to go through with a relatively small team of reviewers. We began to realize how bringing in some support could make the entire reviewing process more efficient and more thorough, while still giving our readers access to all the critical aspects of an application.” 

“The Kira assessment felt like the ideal area to redistribute our efforts,” she continued. “And with Kira’s Reviewer Services, they provided us with the resources to make the process seamless.”

“Review Services help us identify aspects of a candidacy that require additional consideration, allowing our own readers to focus more deeply on those areas.”

"And, we’ll get more eyes on each applicant, which helps us mitigate instances of bias,” she added. 

Gathering deeper applicant insights

Created to complement the traditional interview process, Yale SOM’s Asynchronous Assessment in Kira Talent works as an interview precursor, giving the admissions team valuable insight into an applicant's communication and language skills, which previously could not be assessed until a live interview. 

“Alongside traditional admissions materials such as transcripts, resumes, and the essay, the Kira assessment is one of the considerations our application readers will take into account when evaluating an application,” shared Grodman. “It not only gives candidates a chance to present themselves in an increasingly relevant media format, but also gives us a more authentic snapshot of their communication skills compared to a written sample that might be highly coached or influenced by others.”

“The short video responses from the Kira assessment may only offer a glimpse, but more often than not, it’s enough for us to flag potential issues before the interview stage.”

Gaining an accurate assessment of language and communication

“Being able to articulate yourself on your feet is an important skill in the MBA classroom,” continued Grodman. “Each year, we receive many international applicants for whom English is not their native language. As the language of instruction at Yale is English, we need to ensure that we’re admitting students who have an adequate mastery of the language that will help them succeed in the classroom.”

“We used to rely on the common English language exams to assess applicants’ abilities,” she explained. “However, we found that those results were not always reflective of what we saw when we interviewed the candidate.” 

“With Kira, we’re able to get a spontaneous language sample from a large group of applicants earlier in the process.”

“The number of interview reports that come back expressing serious English language concerns have decreased significantly since we implemented Kira,” Grodman shared. “That's been a big win for our admissions team because it means that we’re saving ourselves hours of work scheduling and conducting those interviews.”

“Because Kira has allowed us to drop the English language exam requirement for the MBA program, we’ve been able to reduce barriers for our applicants as well,” she continued. “We have another program where we do currently require a TOEFL or an IELTS, and we get a high number of inquiries about exemptions due to factors such as access to the test and conflicts with exam dates, especially close to a deadline.” 

Delivered online and on-demand, Kira’s Asynchronous Assessment allows applicants to complete their responses at a time and place that works for them.

“Removing that burden has been quite valuable to our MBA candidates,” Grodman added. “It’s one less factor for them to worry about as they get their application ready in time for the deadline.”

Evolving admissions alongside a trusted partner

“Kira, as a partner, is very innovative, always thinking about what's coming next and sharing ways in which other schools are approaching challenges that are similar to ours,” Grodman shared.

“The platform itself mirrors this approach to innovation by making it so easy for us to iterate on our process," she continued. "This gives us the freedom to be a little more experimental than we could be within our central application, and allows us to keep the assessment relevant to the current business landscape.”

At Kira Talent, our focus is always on your applicants. From the platform features we build with them in mind, to the 24/7 support helping them have a seamless assessment experience, we take pride in the continued excellence of the Kira Talent applicant experience.

In 2023, we closed out our fourth year in a row with an impressive 4.6/5 applicant satisfaction rating! While admissions teams appreciate the efficiency and simplicity Kira brings to their processes, it's the positive feedback from applicants that consistently influences their decision to choose Kira Talent for interviews and assessments year after year. Learn more about what 2023’s applicants thought of their experience with Kira.

  1. What was new for applicants in 2023?
  2. By the numbers
  3. By the comments
  4. Explore reports from other years      

What was new for applicants in 2023?

In 2023, Kira helped applicants engage with their prospective schools and potential peers in a whole new way with enhancements like Group Stations and Forum Sessions in Kira’s Live Interviewing. 

Discover all the new features and enhancements Kira Talent released in 2023

While these amazing new features changed the way applicants were able to connect, one thing stayed the same: applicants loved their experience with Kira Talent.

 

 

For the fourth year in a row, applicants gave Kira an average rating of 4.6/5 stars. 

 

 

This stellar track record speaks to the collaboration between the team at Kira and all the admissions teams we work with at our 900+ partner programs. As these teams navigated all the big and small changes that arose in higher education this year, it's feedback like this that shows them they’re on the right track. Demonstrating that now more than ever, applicants are looking for an admissions experience that's both accessible and engaging.

By the numbers

90.9% of applicants rated their Kira experience either “Great” (4/5) or “Exceptional” (5/5)

A small but mighty 0.2% increase from last year, this demonstrates our commitment to an ever-improving applicant experience.

The average rating was “Exceptional” (4.6/5) 

Another year for the books, with our fourth consecutive "Exceptional" rating from our applicants!

Representing more than 1 million applicants around the world, these ratings demonstrate our commitment to providing applicants with the best experience possible.

1.8% of applicants rated their experience as “Poor” (1/5) 

These applicants, though they’re a small group, offer valuable insights for our product development team and often inspire new products and features we release each year. Some of the feedback has already been addressed in our 2023 product releases!

Learn more about the new features in Kira Talent

97.3% of inquiries were solved instantly by Charlie 

Already a favourite feature amongst our applicants, Charlie the chatbot was even more helpful this year, successfully solving 97.3% of inquiries.

89% of applicants who left feedback on support rated their experience as "Great", given the options of "Great", "Okay", and "Not Good".

As the vast majority of inquiries center around general process questions or simple network and connectivity fixes, it’s great to know that Charlie is available 24/7 to instantly assist applicants. However, like all of us, Charlie needs some help sometimes, so for that 2.7% of cases, Kira’s applicant support team was looped in to help successfully resolve the issue.

By the comments

Kira Talent was built on the concept that numbers don’t tell the full story. That’s why, when we report on the Kira applicant experience, we share feedback directly from applicants.

Applicants thought Kira was approachable and easy to use

This year’s applicants said sayonara to the maze of multiple platforms and relished the streamlined simplicity of the Kira platform, which allowed them to effortlessly share their lived experiences and achievements with their prospective programs.

Applicant experience 5 star graphic“I loved how easy recording the videos were and how fast they uploaded. I had a great experience with Kira.”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic“I was so relieved to see the timer on the screen. That and the very clear instructions and transitions between breakout rooms made the MMI process as stress-free as possible!”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic“It is very easy to use because everything is well explained and easy to understand. The platform is very friendly”

The practice questions were especially appreciated…

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “I loved that I was given unlimited practice opportunities before having to take on the virtual interview. I believe that because of those practice questions, I was able to perform to the best of my abilities on the virtual interview."

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “I really appreciated the practice suite. It helped me get to know the platform better which helped manage the stress!”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic "This is one of the best interview platforms that I’ve experienced. All of the practice material helped me build confidence before heading into the actual interview."

It’s normal to feel nervous before your interview or assessment, but at Kira we aim to ensure that those butterflies are due to anticipation, not process anxiety. Having applicants call out our built-in practice module for its effectiveness in calming nerves and bolstering confidence tells us that we’re on the right track.

We kept technical support at the forefront of our service

Applicant experience 4 star graphic“I like how modern and clean the platform looks! It was easy to navigate and use with no errors or lagging. The 'help' button was also easy to find and the chatbot provided some good answers to the questions I had.”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic "The Kira platform was really easy to navigate and the tech support team was quick to respond."

Technical support is a top priority at Kira, making sure that every applicant has a smooth and engaging experience and, should a problem arise, they can get the on-demand troubleshooting they need to fix their problem and get back to their assessment without delay.

Some applicants shouted out their appreciation for virtual interviews in general

Whether they’re in another state or another continent, Kira helps applicants dynamically connect with programs without facing the various hurdles associated with traditional interviews. Simply put, it makes their lives easier, and 2023’s applicants were quick to show their appreciation!

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “I love this format! I liked that I was given time to prepare before submitting my answers. You don't feel pressured since you're in your own relaxing space with no external distractions like examiners”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “I’ve never done a virtual interview before and I quite enjoyed this experience!”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “This is such a great way to help the university get to know me, even though we are across the country from each other. I also loved that I could record the questions on my own time.”

Overall, applicants felt that Kira helped their dream schools get to know them better

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “I loved it! The video responses felt so dynamic and I was able to speak sincerely and honestly, which will help the university get a genuine understanding of who I am.”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “I love that Kira makes me more than just words on paper to this admissions team.”

Applicant experience 5 star graphic “I think Kira is a critical piece in helping to show schools who I am, and what I can do in their program.”

This kind of feedback hits at the heart of Kira’s mission. As we continue to work towards a more accessible, equitable, and intentional admissions industry, it’s this idea of gaining deeper, more authentic insights into applicants that motivates our clients and drives us to continue delivering engaging applicant experiences.

Click here to learn more about why we publish this data and how we collect and use applicant feedback

Explore reports from other years

Stay on top of your admissions process with the newest tools and features released in 2023 at Kira Talent. From Single Sign-On support to automated reminder emails, these new features can eliminate those repetitive manual tasks you do every day, freeing you up to focus on the top talent in your applicant pool. 

Discover what’s new in Kira

  1. Sign on in a snap
  2. Keep your applications rolling in
  3. A new way to nudge applicants along
  4. Seamlessly evaluate group dynamics
  5. Putting the power in your hands
  6. Amp-up applicant integrity monitoring 
  7. Coming soon to Kira

Sign on in a snap

We’ve made it even easier to review your applicants by adding Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality to the Kira platform. 

Single Sign-On makes logging in simple by allowing you to use one set of login credentials to access multiple websites and services, saving you the hassle of remembering lots of different usernames and passwords. 

Strengthen login security with a process that is safe as well as seamless. Kira’s SSO functionality is integrated with SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language), the leading provider of secure SSO for businesses and enterprises, that lets users balance between both security and flexibility.

Reduce repetitive tasks by enabling staff to access all the necessary platforms without reentering their information. With SSO, you log in once and can then move freely between different platforms, such as the Kira platform and your CRM, without needing to re-enter your username and password. 

Keep your applications rolling in

While rolling admissions help spread the reviewing work across the admissions cycle, the continuous scheduling of interviews can end up burying your team in organizational work. 

With Kira’s Rolling Applicant Deadlines feature, you determine how long you want applicants to have to complete their on-demand Kira assessment and we’ll do the rest. Once a timeframe has been set, applicants are automatically invited to complete a Kira assessment and are assigned a deadline based on when they submitted their initial application. 

Stay on top of time zones by setting Rolling Applicant Deadlines to reflect your school’s location and clearly display the timezone in the applicant’s invitation email.

Get a feel for what works best by monitoring completion times throughout the cycle to get better insight into how long applicants need to complete your assessment comfortably. 

Feel free to make adjustments with an easy rescheduling feature that enables you to modify an applicant’s deadline in just a few clicks. 

A new way to nudge applicants along

Keep your assessment deadlines top of mind for your applicants with Kira’s automated reminder emails. 

Choose when you want applicants to be reminded about their upcoming deadlines and Kira will take care of the rest by monitoring your applicants’ deadlines, calculating when to reach out based on your selected reminder interval(s) and sending out reminder emails to complete their Kira assessments. Once an applicant completes their assessment, they’re removed from the reminder list and won’t receive any more notifications. 

Seamlessly evaluate group dynamics

See first-hand how your applicants will succeed in a collaborative environment by incorporating Group Stations into your Kira Live Interviewing experience. 

With a flexible set-up to suit your needs, Kira allows you to have individual applicants come together for a single station, or have groups of applicants move through each interview room as a unit. 

Putting the power in your hands

The Asynchronous Assessment Builder offers admissions teams total control of their assessments in Kira. 

Used to create, build, and edit assessments, this user-friendly tool allows you to be as involved in the technical aspects of your assessment as you want to be.

Enjoy your independence (backed by industry-leading support) as you construct and modify your assessments. For the work you want to delegate, your dedicated Client Success Manager is on hand to activate custom features, answer your questions, and aid in any aspect of your assessment's creation or revision.

See the applicant experience for yourself with the applicant journey preview tool, ensuring a smooth process for your applicants, from registration to assessment completion.

Effortlessly replicate your assessment with the Asynchronous Assessment Builder’s convenient duplication function, which allows you to copy over existing competencies and rubrics for new assessments.

Amp-up applicant integrity monitoring 

SimCheck by Turnitin, Kira’s fully integrated applicant integrity tool, allows admissions teams to assess the originality of each submission efficiently. In 2023, SimCheck got a powerful boost to now detect the use of generative AI in written work. 

SimCheck automatically processes an applicant’s submitted written work to identify instances of generative AI, as well as compares it against an extensive database of internet sources to quickly identify any sections of text that appear elsewhere.

Coming soon

Joining forces with Ravenna

Kira Talent and Ravenna are joining forces to transform the K-12 private school admissions landscape by blending Kira's holistic admissions assessment platform with Ravenna's all-encompassing admissions and enrollment management system. Be the first to know when this integration launches by subscribing to the Kira Talent newsletter.

At the University of Connecticut School of Law, students get the best of both worlds. A big school name with a small school feel, UConn Law boasts a six-to-one student-to-faculty ratio even as they count alumni in 50 US states and more than 50 countries around the world. 

“Oftentimes the drawback of going to a school with a big name and a big reputation is that you're on a big campus where it's easier to fall through the cracks and harder to make personal connections,” explained Lauren Terbush, the Director of JD Admissions at UConn School of Law. “But that is not the case here. You'd be hard-pressed to find an employer who hasn’t heard of the University of Connecticut, but the law school itself is fairly small so you get that intimate classroom setting.”

Receiving an average of 1,500 applications per year, UConn Law knows that this on-campus environment is a significant draw for prospective applicants — many of whom want the opportunity to demonstrate why they would be successful in such a collaborative environment. 

“In my 10 years of working in law school admissions I've frequently been asked by applicants if we have an interview opportunity,” Terbush explained. “While we’ve always wanted to include an interview in the admissions process, we wanted to ensure that we were doing so equitably, which for us means offering an interview to every candidate.”

“When we discovered Kira Talent, we realized we could finally add that long-sought-after component to our application,” Terbush shared.

A future-proofed process to identify applicant fit

“Any seasoned admission professional knows that a written application can’t capture an applicant's whole story,” Terbush explained. “The question is: what other aspects should we be giving deference to?”

“Law school admissions have long held a serious reliance on traditional, quantitative indicators of academic success such as standardized tests and undergraduate GPAs,” she shared. “However, the shift towards test-optional policies in the undergraduate admissions space raises the possibility that law schools may one day adopt the same strategy. With that in mind, we want to start building and refining a holistic admissions process now so that we’re prepared for the future.”

Discover how NYU SPS is using Kira's Asynchronous Assessment to make more informed admissions decisions

“Employability has also become a much larger focus in recent years,” Terbush continued. “Prospective students want to go to schools that have the best employment rates, so admissions teams are looking to evaluate employability in the admissions process. What better way to evaluate employability than with an interview?”

“The interview component allows us to get a better sense of who a candidate is, giving us a more holistic view of our applicants’ capabilities and overall program fit.”

A structured and quantifiable way to measure qualitative skills

“Asynchronous interviews aren't necessarily new in law school admissions,” shared Terbush. “Every year I'm hearing from colleagues across the country who have added an interview component to their admissions process. When we decided to bring an interview into our process I spoke to those colleagues and got their advice on several different platforms. When we compared our options, Kira stood out from the rest.”

One group that Terbush spoke to was her colleagues at the University of Connecticut School of Business’s MBA program who had already been using Kira for 8 years. 

“For their admissions team, the quantitative element of scoring in Kira made all the difference, allowing them to use the assessments to make scholarship determinations,” Terbush explained.

“With Kira, you get a quantitative measure of qualitative skills.”

Kira’s structured evaluation and custom rubrics allow UConn’s reviewers to assess all applicants with the same competency-based criteria that is unique to the process at UConn, producing an overall score.

Learn more about scoring and analytics in Kira’s Asynchronous Assessment  

“Quantitative factors are highly valued in law school admissions, and there is a rationale to that,” Terbush continued. “Where quantitative factors are easy to assess, rank, and organize, it can be very difficult to compare two qualitative reviews. With Kira, we get a qualitatively informed quantitative factor.” 

Making a new process painless with a user-friendly product and exceptional client support 

“When we spoke to other Kira clients to learn more about their experience, the one thing that always came up was the fantastic customer service,” Terbush shared. “That proved to be true throughout our onboarding and launch.”

“It certainly helps that the platform is very user-friendly,” she continued. “Some of my colleagues are somewhat wary of technological advancements, and even they were pleasantly surprised at how easy the Kira platform is to access and navigate. But no matter how simple a platform may be, it’s a significant undertaking to create and launch an entirely new element in your admissions process.”

“The Client Success Team at Kira made it not only possible but painless,” shared Terbush. “We made the decision to launch Kira only six weeks before the start of the admissions cycle.” 

“It was an impossibly quick turnaround and while I would recommend to others to give themselves more time, Kira simply told us not to worry, they would get it done.”

“Kira sectioned the onboarding process into digestible chunks so that it never felt overwhelming for us,” she explained. “Meetings were scheduled periodically, each with a clear focus on what we were going to learn that day and the key takeaways from each session. The whole support team was very organized and even-keeled, taking us step-by-step all the way to the launch.”

Maintaining the integrity of the admissions interview with plagiarism detection

“Creating the assessment was similarly a structured and collaborative process,” shared Terbush. “We already knew what competencies we wanted to assess, so Kira helped us determine what style of question – behavioural versus open-ended – and response – written versus verbal – would elicit the most effective data points about our applicants by really hitting on the competencies that we were looking to assess.”

“Behind the scenes, Kira’s integrity metrics and security features also help us ensure that we’re assessing what we want to be.” 

“Kira tracks applicants’ typing speeds for their written responses, browser refreshes, and flags suspicious behaviours so that our team can investigate further,” Terbush added. “With the rise of generative AI, we know how that can impact the integrity of written applications, which is why we love having this added layer of security. After all, writing is one of the most essential skill sets that a lawyer needs to have.”

Finding the diamonds in the rough

“As our first cycle of applicants complete their Kira assessment, I’m loving how we’re able to get to know our candidates better,” Terbush shared. “We’ve already seen cases where applicants who may not have stood out on paper shine in their interview.” 

“We can see that they’re going to be a great fit for our institution and that they have that employability factor,” she added. 

“It feels like we’ve got an assessment that’s helping us evaluate exactly what we should be evaluating for, and that’s really crucial and very exciting.”

For students looking to complete an undergraduate degree in business, the University of Toronto’s four-year Commerce degree at Rotman College likely ranks high on their list. Housed on the beautiful St. George campus in downtown Toronto, Rotman School of Management is ranked as the top business school in Canada and among the top 20 business schools in the world. This sterling reputation is part of the reason why the commerce program draws more than 8,000 applications per year, creating a challenge for their admissions team.

“Thousands of high-achieving students with perfect grades apply to the commerce program each year,” shared Miriam Irvine, a Recruitment and Admissions Officer at Rotman Commerce. “In order to distinguish between them we needed to take a more holistic approach.”

“Adding a Kira assessment to our admissions process has allowed us to do just that,” she added, “giving us deeper insights into applicant potential while increasing the efficiency and integrity of the process.”

Designing a holistic review fit for a world-class program

“Holistic review has been top of mind for our admissions team for several years now,” Irvine shared. “We always want to remain at the forefront of admissions best practices, and for us that means listening to all the research that has been done into the importance of non-cognitive skills, such as grit and resilience, and the role that those skills play in determining student success in the program and beyond.” 

“Beyond grades, we want to see what else a student can bring to our program and what support we can offer that will help them succeed.”

“Equally important to us was that this supplemental application was structured in such a way as to allow us to mitigate instances of bias and ensure the authenticity of the submissions, even as we scaled the process across thousands of applicants and dozens of reviewers,” shared Irvine. 

“The supplemental application is there to give us a deeper understanding of our applicants,” she explained. “In order for that to be successful, we need to ensure that applicants are being assessed on their own work and that merit is assigned uninfluenced by bias.”

“The final consideration was volume,” she continued. “During peak times, the system needed to be able to handle the activity without any technical issues. At the other end of the process, our reviewers needed to be able to efficiently assess applications at a high volume as well.”

Identifying the best applicants for the program faster

The Asynchronous Assessment in Kira Talent met all of these requirements and more,”  Irvine shared. “Since 2015, we’ve had every applicant to Rotman Commerce complete an on-demand timed video and timed written assessment with Kira.”

Working with the team of experts at Kira, Rotman Commerce identified a set of core competencies and created a bank of questions that allow reviewers to assess applicants for these all-important soft skills.

“Once an applicant completes their assessment, it’s assigned to a team of reviewers who score the applicant using a clearly structured and defined rubric,” Irvine explained. “Our reviewers go through extensive training by our Center of Professional Skills to ensure accurate and consistent scoring across candidates.”

“The on-demand nature of the assessment lets us have multiple reviewers simultaneously reviewing the same application completely independently,” she added. “This keeps the process moving efficiently and helps us mitigate admissions bias.” 

Utilizing tech to identify instances of plagiarism and generative AI in admissions

“The integrity of the admissions process is very important to our senior management team, our faculty, and our recruitment admissions team,” Irvine shared. 

“We want to ensure that deserving students are receiving offers of admission.”

“That’s where having an industry-leading tech partner like Kira makes all the difference,” shared Irvine. “We use Kira to automatically flag potential instances of plagiarism or inauthentic submissions across all 8,000 applicants.” 

Powered by Turnitin, SimCheck is Kira’s fully integrated plagiarism and generative AI detection software that automatically crosschecks all written materials submitted via the Kira platform with other submissions, as well as Turnitin’s database of over 91 billion webpages and sources.

Learn how Imperial College Business School is using SimCheck across 15+ programs

“SimCheck allows us to see when an applicant has taken content from another source, whether that’s an online source or another candidate’s own submission,” explained Irvine. “The tool helps us ensure that we’re giving offers of admissions to applicants who have worked hard on their supplemental application and have submitted something that has been done by themselves, using only their thoughts and ideas.”

“The automation of this process means we’re able to apply the same rigour to each application,” she continued. “We aren’t relying on individual reviewers to investigate thousands of submissions, each submission is being run through the same system.” 

The future of authenticity in admissions

“Generative AI is quickly becoming a big focus in the area of admissions integrity as well,” Irvine shared. “We know that the available tools will only continue to get smarter and more accessible to our applicants, so we want to ensure that our admissions process is evolving accordingly. For us, that means designing a supplemental application that either harnesses generative AI or asks questions in such a way where generative AI isn’t able to adequately answer.” 

“Already we’re seeing that AI-generated responses score very poorly against our rubrics in Kira.”

“It’s an area that we will continue exploring, and Kira is an important partner in that process.”

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