Common application for Iowa, ISU, UNI set to go live next week

Come next week, all new U.S. high school graduates wanting to apply to more than one of Iowa's public universities will be able to do so using a single application available at a single website.

The Board of Regents-created common application portal - at apply.regents.iowa.gov - will guide students through application questions common to University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa.

After answering those initial questions, applicants will have to provide additional information to each institution and answer follow-up questions specific to each university. And students still will have to pay a $40 fee per university to which they apply.

But members of the Board of Regents and its staff say the common portal will save students time and streamline the process.

'The portal will provide a one-stop shop for new U.S. high school graduates who are interested in applying to more than one regent university,” regents chief academic officer Diana Gonzalez said in a news release. 'They won't need to answer the common questions more than once.”

The portal, when it goes live July 1, will be available for new U.S. high school graduates wanting to enroll for the fall 2016 semester and after. The board last year charged its staff to create the portal following a recommendation that emerged during an efficiency review of its institutions.

The portal is expected to cost about $290,000 to create and implement in the first year. That total includes $90,000 to develop the portal between November and June and another $200,000 in anticipated costs for the first year of implementation - between July and June 2016.

Annual ongoing costs are anticipated in the neighborhood of $100,000, according to regent documents, and that's 'above and beyond the ongoing (information technology) and other support costs of each of the admissions offices.”

The portal was not pitched as a money saver, but rather a customer service benefit for prospective students, and board officials said it's too soon to tell whether the institutions will save resources in the long run.

Board documents indicate only a small portion of applicants to Iowa's public universities apply to more than one - and thus would benefit from a common application portal. For fall 2014, for example, 35,305 people applied to at least one universities, of which 324 applied to all three.

About 11 percent, or 3,969, applied to two of the universities, meaning about 88 percent applied to just one.