CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Matchbox today announced that five Admissions Offices at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the MBA program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management are the first six university programs in the world to use Matchbox to power their admissions review processes. By reducing the time it takes to review and process applications up to 75 percent, the Matchbox iPad app and cloud-based infrastructure are modernizing today’s Admissions Offices, empowering admissions teams to shift their focus toward recruiting high caliber students rather than managing reams of paperwork.
The company, formerly known as AdmitPad, also announced that it secured a $2.5 million initial round of financing, led by Mike Maples at Floodgate, with participation from Greylock Partners and Felicis Ventures. Angel investors in the round include MIT Professor Ed Roberts, AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley, Maker Communications CEO Bill Giudice, and Matrix Partners Special Limited Partner Rob Soni.
According to data recently released by the Department of Education, college admissions programs are receiving more applications than ever before – highlighting the need for the Matchbox iPad solution:
- Applications to U.S. universities spiked 41 percent between 2003 and 2009;
- Colleges have hired more personnel to manage this influx, spending a record $11.7B in 2009 on salaries and payroll related to recruitment;
- While student services payroll increased, schools shaved 21 percent of their overall staff in 2009 amid the economic downturn;
- Schools can spend upwards of $6,000 to acquire one student, yet schools on average have become less efficient at converting applicants to students;
- The ratio of applicants to enrollments has been decreasing every year since 2003, reaching a low of 46 percent in 2009.
While some schools have moved to online applications, such as Common App and ApplyYourself, most admissions review processes remain paper-based and logistically challenging. The general lack of technology solutions for admissions has pushed schools into hiring more human labor to address the growth in application volume. At the same time, Admissions Offices are finding it increasingly difficult to find qualified personnel to bolster their staff. School administrators are increasingly filling out admissions staff with faculty, students, alumni and outside contractors – further complicating the logistics for already anemic admissions teams. Matchbox streamlines the entire process, enabling admissions professionals to shift from logistics to recruiting.
“Admissions professionals have traditionally lived by the 70/30 rule – spending 70 percent of their time on logistics related to application review, and 30 percent of their time recruiting candidates,” said Stephen Marcus, founder and CEO of Matchbox. “Matchbox is the first software application to help schools flip this equation, enabling admissions to spend much more time on enrolling students. We understand the issues admissions professionals face because our team has roots in Admissions. I built the first version of AdmitPad to help me deal with my own application reviews as an alumni member of the MIT Sloan Admissions Committee. The pain in this market is palpable and extends into many other areas of recruitment that we are determined to solve.”
Five programs at the MIT Sloan School of Management—the full-time MBA, Executive MBA, Masters of Science in Management Studies, Leaders for Global Operations, and the Masters of Finance, as well as the full-time MBA program at UCLA Anderson School of Management—are the first six university programs to use the Matchbox system for application review. The full-time MBA program at MIT Sloan began using Matchbox last year, when it reviewed over 5,000 applications for the Class of 2013. MIT and UCLA are estimating that they will review more than 10,000 applications on Matchbox this year. MIT Sloan says it will save more than 2,500 hours of back-office and review time, as well 175,000 sheets of paper as a result of Matchbox.
Matchbox’s software leverages the unique touch interface of the Apple iPad to provide significant gains in review time. Users are able to read through application materials and simultaneously collect key information within student applications at a pace much greater than any other solution in the marketplace.
“Matchbox is more than just a paperless system—it’s a sophisticated decision and collaboration engine,” said Rod Garcia, Director of MBA Admissions at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “Matchbox has absolutely revolutionized the admissions process at MIT Sloan – our previous process was paper-intensive and time consuming, with stacks of paper admissions files being routed to the admissions staffers during the various stages of review. Matchbox removes these processes, providing our admissions team one, collaborative candidate view on an iPad.”
UCLA Anderson has used Matchbox to make the admissions process completely paperless, while also providing unprecedented speed and depth to the evaluation process. With Matchbox, the school can make decisions much more rapidly, allowing it to quickly target high quality applicants with the best potential fit for the MBA program– a major competitive differentiator in an increasingly competitive market.
“No other vendor has the power of a large-scale desktop application in a mobile form factor that provides admissions teams the ability to review applications on the road, with or without access to the Internet,” said Rob Weiler, Assistant Dean at UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Mobile support is especially critical during the busy recruiting season, as both MIT and UCLA collectively held over one hundred recruiting events around the world during the 2011-2012 application year. “We thought that Matchbox’s native iPad application and cloud-based infrastructure could provide the battery life, security and mobility that our highly mobile Admissions team required,” said Weiler.
Matchbox allows users to sync their iPads with a cloud-based server at Amazon whenever and wherever they can locate Internet connectivity. The software also provides unique and easy-to-use collaboration engine that allows admissions offices to assemble different perspectives on a candidate from highly diverse admissions committees, which can be comprised of deans, faculty, staff, alumni, students, and contract readers.
Pricing and Availability
Matchbox is available now as a software subscription with pricing that starts at $200 per user/per month and includes a free 30-day trial. For more information, please visit www.matchbox.net
About Matchbox
Matchbox helps universities accelerate and improve their entire recruitment process using its software built specifically for admissions professionals by admissions professionals. Founded in 2011 and privately held, Matchbox is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. For more information, please visit www.matchbox.net.