Case Studies · 6 minute read

Roseman Dental scales holistic admissions process and saves 800+ hours of faculty time

Transitioning to a three-year program model, Roseman Dental needed to increase their admissions capacity in a way that wouldn’t overwhelm their faculty, compromise their process, or impact their budget. Discover how Kira is helping them deliver holistic review at scale.

Challenge

Reducing faculty time-on-task while scaling the admissions process to accommodate an increasing number of applicants.

Key outcomes

Reduced faculty time by 80% while staying within a tight budget.

Favourite features

  • Applicant Pay
  • Reviewer Services
  • Integrated marketing videos

Known for its collaborative learning environment and team-centric culture both in and outside of the classroom, Roseman University’s College of Dental Medicine wanted to make sure that their admissions process was able to identify the applicants who would thrive in that environment. 

Although in-person interviews had worked for them in the past, a switch to a three-year program model meant increasing applications and not enough capacity to review them all.

“We were already reviewing about 2000 files a year at about  20 to 30 minutes for each file for an experienced reviewer,” shared Dr. William Harman, the Associate Dean at Roseman Dental. “That’s around 1000 hours of faculty time. We’re anticipating our applicant pool increasing to around 3500 candidates. That amount of faculty time simply becomes unsustainable.”

“We needed to find a solution where we could get better insight into our applicants earlier in the admissions process so we could reduce the faculty time on task.”

“Thankfully, Kira Talent has enabled us to accomplish that goal.”

Saving 800+ hours of faculty time

“Kira Talent helped us scale our reviewing process while also reducing faculty time,” explained Dr. Harman. 

Roseman College of Dental Medicine uses Kira to screen applicants prior to the file review. By efficiently assessing applicants’ traits and soft skills earlier in the admissions process, Roseman gathers deeper insights in an efficient way and helps reduce the number of file reviews and live interviews conducted by their staff and faculty. 

“We’ve gone from 2000 file reviews a year to around 450,” Dr. Harman explained. 

“That translates to more than 800 hours of faculty time that we’re saving.”

“We have seen a significant increase in the efficiency of our reviewing process but we haven’t found any reduction in the quality of our students,” shared Duane Winden, the Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Roseman Dental. “Our class of 2022 had a 100% pass rate on the Integrated National Board Dental Examination (INDBE) and we’re looking at 99% for this coming year.”

“As our applicant pool grows, those savings will only increase,” Dr. Harman added.

Doing more with the budget you have

Although Roseman Dental’s admissions team was sold on the benefits of Kira and the time savings it would bring, they still had to find room in the budget.

“Everyone agreed that we wanted to transition our process to Kira, the last step was finding a way that wouldn’t exceed our already stretched-thin budget,” explained Dr. Harman. 

With Kira’s Applicant Pay, Roseman Dental was able to cover the costs and get the flexibility they needed.

“With Applicant Pay, our applicants are able to pay for the assessment directly, rather than us incorporating a fee for it into the general application fee,” explained Dr. Harman. “And with that, we’re able to use Kira without having to pull those upfront costs from our limited budget.” 

“Part of our criteria for a new admissions solution was one that would not hugely impact our budget. Applicant Pay allows us to accommodate any kind of applicant volume fluctuation without disturbing our budget,” Dr. Harman added. “This was especially top-of-mind for us as we were transitioning to our new three-year model, and didn’t have historic information to help predict application numbers.”

“Kira allows us to scale our admissions process in a way that does not impact our budget, which has made the higher-ups in the university very happy.” 

Learn more about Applicant Pay in Kira Talent 

Identifying applicants who align with your values

“It’s really important for us that our faculty are face-to-face with our prospective applicants and being involved in an interview process,” shared Dr. Rachel Novak, Assistant Dean at Roseman Dental.

“With Kira, they still get that contact but we’re able to really streamline the entire process and save our faculty members a significant amount of time.”

“We want to make sure that the applicants we’re considering fit with our educational philosophy and our culture,” shared Dr. Harman. “To facilitate that, we wanted to make sure that we were portraying our core values to applicants early in the admissions process.”

Using the pre-recorded marketing videos integrated into the school’s assessment in Kira, Roseman is able to share their culture, values, and team-centric spirit with their applicants.

“We really wanted to narrow our applicant group down to the people who knew about our program and resonated with our approach to education,” Dr. Harman added.

“We created a series of videos that talk about our process,” Dr. Novak shared. “Through the videos, our applicants meet all of our deans, our students, and our faculty. To underscore the fact that we do everything in teams here at Roseman, our video questions were asked by a team of our faculty members and a student. Our applicants really resonated with that.”

“With Kira, applicants were able to learn a tremendous amount about our program just by completing the assessment,” continued Dr. Novak. “They come to the final interview knowing so much more about our program and our values.”

Assessing applicants more holistically

“When we look at the future of admissions, I believe we’re moving towards a more holistic approach,” shared Dr. Harman. “So when we were looking at innovating our admissions process, the logical step was to start getting more holistic information on our candidates.”

Prior to Kira, Roseman’s faculty and admissions team simply didn’t have the capacity to interview each candidate in person. 

“When you have thousands of applicants, you can only get to so many,” explained Dr. Novak. “Your class gets filled and some of those applicants who were never seen just get lost in the pile.”

“With Kira, every single applicant that reaches our minimum DAT and GPA metrics is invited to complete an assessment,” she continued. “Instead of seeing only a small fraction of our applicants, this allows our entire applicant pool to be evaluated holistically.”

Maintaining CODA certification

Conducting holistic review across their entire applicant pool helps Roseman Dental support diversity in their program.

“Diversity is very important in dental education,” shared Dr. Novak. “Our next evaluation for the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) is next year, so we wanted to make sure our process could be defended as fair and inclusive while showing that bias is controlled as much as possible. 

“Kira has been really helpful with that,” added Winden. “They walked us through the processes that are built into the platform to mitigate bias in the reviewing process and ensure that each applicant receives a fair evaluation.”

“Through its inherent accessibility to applicants, Kira helps ensure that we have a diverse group of reviewers reviewing our applicants.”

“We know that that’s one of the best ways to support the enrollment of diverse students,” Winden continued.

“I believe CODA is going to be very impressed with the nature of this initiative,” shared Dr. Harman. “Because we have such a range of people involved in the development of this Kira project, it's a very broad-based initiative and we think that’s going to be very useful in the accreditation process.”

The future of dental admissions

“We are on the precipice of a transformation in the way that we do admissions,” shared Dr. Harman. “The de-emphasis on standardized tests means that we need to come up with better ways to evaluate applicants that do not rely heavily on DAT and other test scores.” 

“At Roseman Dental, we’re excited about that future,” Dr. Harman continued. “With Kira, we have been able to make our admissions process more accessible, reducing costs for our applicants because they won’t be travelling to a school that they don't match with, and providing them with a convenient way to interview. On the admissions side, we’re making better admissions decisions that are based on a holistic view of applicant fit. It’s another step towards the brave new world of admissions.”

Identifying more best-fit applicants with holistic review at scale

Roseman University's College of Dental Medicine shares how they've saved 800+ hours of faculty time on admissions in this recorded webinar.

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