Previous Schools on applications

Brian LeBlanc
Brian LeBlanc
Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™

Hello friends! I have a rather significant annoyance that I'd like some advice on how to handle.

On the application tab where previous schools are listed, School Name is a required dropdown. However, I really don't want to use a dropdown. The majority of our campuses are in an area with close to 300 different public schools, and that doesn't count private or charter schools. That dropdown would reach to the center of the earth if we had every option on there.

We don't request records during the admissions process for applicants below 6th grade, and even then we ask them to fill out a release form that has the school name on it, so we truly don't care about the previous school name on the application; it has no bearing on our admissions process. However, since it's a required and locked field, we have to keep it on the application.

So, what we do is ask parents to select “add another school not listed” and then type in the name of the school in the Other field. But this seems like a rather pointless exercise, a hurdle that doesn't need to be there.

Any thoughts? How do other schools handle this?

Comments

  • Jess Moxsky
    Jess Moxsky
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    Does your school simply not track previous schools for applicants? I can't imagine not wanting to have that information for reporting purposes at the very least. I would say if you truly don't think you care about tracking that data, you can simply remove the “Schools” block from your application form.

  • Brian LeBlanc
    Brian LeBlanc
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    Jess - sorry to be confusing; we do need the information to know where to request records from once the student enrolls. But no, to this point we don't report anything related to previous schools. I'm just trying to figure out a way to be able to use the dropdown without listing every single school in the area, because that would be a total nightmare.

    I guess what I'm asking is if there's a reason that the previous school has to be a dropdown. I found a long ago idea that indicates it may at one time have been a text field:

    I mean, I'm fine with how we do it; it's just kind of roundabout for no apparent reason.

  • Jess Moxsky
    Jess Moxsky
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    Brian LeBlanc:

    Jess - sorry to be confusing; we do need the information to know where to request records from once the student enrolls. But no, to this point we don't report anything related to previous schools. I'm just trying to figure out a way to be able to use the dropdown without listing every single school in the area, because that would be a total nightmare.

    I guess what I'm asking is if there's a reason that the previous school has to be a dropdown. I found a long ago idea that indicates it may at one time have been a text field:

    I mean, I'm fine with how we do it; it's just kind of roundabout for no apparent reason.

    I think for most schools, collecting this information accurately is important, and with a smaller pool of potential Previous Schools, it is a lot easier to maintain and manage the dropdown options. Otherwise, our admissions team would have to continuously massage text entries like “AB High School,” and “ABHS.”

  • Scott Chrysler
    Scott Chrysler
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 K-12 Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    Brian -

    The reason to use the dropdown list is data consistency. I just spent a couple of days cleaning our list of sending schools so we can do a deep dive in in the data to look at multiple aspects of candidates and matriculants from different schools. Because our admissions office had not been utilizing the dropdown list, our main feeder school existed in the database with five different names.

    As for “controlling” the length of that dropdown list, you can control which schools appear on the transfer list, inquiry from list, and attending if declining an acceptance list nia the Organization type tab for the organization.

    Core > Settings > School information > Organizations > open the school you want to edit > Organization type tab

    All the best,

    Scott

  • Vicky Lopuchowycz
    Vicky Lopuchowycz
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 August 2025 Monthly Challenge Badge Name Dropper

    We have created a drop down list of our most common schools that students come from and then for those not on the list they fill in the “other” field. It helps to keep the list cleaner for when we pull data to see our top feeder schools.

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