APRÓ and MMS: Smart Solution That Simplifies High School Enrollment

The Center for Education and School Services (MMS) has long faced complex challenges around student admissions to upper secondary schools.

With growing numbers of applications and the need for transparency and fairness in the process, MMS needed to rethink its existing system.

A comprehensive solution for a complex process

APRÓ was tasked with developing an integrated system to handle applications from both new and returning students. 

The system also enables school administrators to log in securely and review applications, define study tracks, and adjust screening requirements to fit each school's needs. 

The system APRÓ built receives applications from Island.is, though that part was developed by Origo. 

APRÓ then provided Island.is with information about open application periods for schools, which Nordic and other languages are available, and which study tracks are open for enrollment.

Schools use the system to configure information and process applications, with the bulk of activity focused on handling new student admissions.

This part of the system lets schools set the total number of students they can accept. In some cases, schools can impose capacity limits on individual study tracks. 

The system uses a specialized algorithm for processing that ensures a student applying to a school gets into their highest-priority choice, provided they meet the school's requirements. 

Once processing is complete, the system automatically sends the data to each school's student information system, where staff can start placing students in courses.

A major advantage of the new system is that processing, which was previously done in Excel, is now fully automated. The system ranks students automatically, calculates weighted averages, and groups results by each student's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices.

Built to fit each school's needs

The team that worked on the project: Kári Gunnarsson, Loki Húnfjörð Jósepsson, and Birnir Þór Árnason.

"The project was demanding but extremely rewarding, and our partnership with MMS went really smoothly. Early in the process, we brought in representatives from several schools to make sure we truly understood their needs," says Loki, team lead at APRÓ.

Special care was taken to meet different schools' requirements. For example, a school like Tækniskólinn needs different processing than most other upper secondary schools.

"This system has saved us enormous amounts of time and helps standardize how schools take in and rank students. The process is now much more transparent," says Guðrún Helga Ástríðardóttir, specialist in secondary school services at MMS.