AI agent · Education · Read & extract
Admissions screening
The agent reads each applicant's transcripts, diplomas and certificates, whatever their format or country of origin, and builds one comparable file per applicant. Admissions staff and committees judge applicants, not document layouts.
Typical volumes for this process, not a client figure.
Transcripts read and transposed into a scoring grid.
Read and scored; committees see a comparable file, not a pile.
Where the time goes today
Applications arrive with transcripts from many schools and, increasingly, many countries: different grading scales, subject names, term structures and languages, some scanned from paper or photographed on a phone. Admissions staff read each one and transpose the grades into the institution's grid by hand. Which subjects count, how a grade on one scale maps to yours, whether the prerequisite subjects are there, whether a result is final or predicted.
The work is slow, and it is where inconsistency creeps in. Two staff members convert the same foreign grade differently. A prerequisite is missed because the subject went by another name. A predicted grade is entered as final. At peak season the pile outruns the team, and committees receive files in different states of completeness, which is unfair to applicants whose files were transcribed last or in a hurry.
How the agent works
- Sort the documentsThe agent classifies each upload: transcript, diploma, certificate, language test result, predicted grades, certified translation.
- Extract the fieldsIt extracts the institution, the qualification, the dates of study, and every subject with its grade, scale and final or predicted status. Each value is linked to its place in the document.
- Map to your gridIt maps subjects to your categories and converts grades using the tables your admissions office has approved. Where no approved conversion exists, it leaves the grade as written and says so.
- Check the prerequisitesIt compares the result with the programme's published entry requirements: required subjects present, minimum grades met, dates within any validity period.
- Build the comparable fileIt produces one standard record per applicant, with flags for anything unreadable, missing or unconverted, and loads it into the admissions system.
What stays with a person
Admissions staff and committees make every admission decision. The comparable file gives them the same facts in the same form; it does not rank applicants or decide who gets in. Personal statements, references, interviews, portfolios and contextual factors are read and weighed by people.
Staff also own the conversion tables and the reading of unfamiliar qualifications. A qualification the office has not seen before goes to a named person, whose decision on how it maps is added to the tables for every later applicant. Suspected forged documents follow the institution's verification procedure, never the agent's judgement alone.
What it reads, what it produces
| It reads | It produces |
|---|---|
| Transcripts, diplomas and certificates, as PDFs, scans or photographs | One comparable file per applicant, in your grid |
| Certified translations | A source link for every extracted value |
| Language test result documents | Flags for unreadable, missing, unconverted or predicted results |
| The application form | A prerequisite checklist per programme applied for |
| Approved grade conversion tables and subject mappings | A list of new qualification types awaiting a mapping decision |
| Each programme's published entry requirements |
Controls that come with it
- Conversion tables are owned and approved by admissions; the agent never invents a conversion.
- Values read with low confidence are flagged, not guessed.
- During peak season, staff check a weekly sample of files against the original documents.
- The agent does not reject applications; incomplete files are flagged to staff.
- Every value traces to a document and a page, and a staff correction overrides the extracted value, is logged, and joins the test set.
How you know it works
- Field-level accuracy on past applications whose transcription has been verified
- Days from complete application to file ready for committee
- Files returned by committee for missing or wrong data
- Whether the same qualification is converted the same way across applicants
- Share of files flagged for a person to read, and the reasons, week by week through the season
Is your process ready?
- Entry requirements and grade conversions are written and approved. If conversions live in one staff member's memory, write them down first.
- The admissions system accepts records from software through an interface or import, and its licence permits that.
- Each extracted grade can be checked against the original in seconds, because it links to its place on the page.
- Peak-season volume exceeds what staff can transcribe without delaying decisions.
- Admissions teams across faculties map a given qualification the same way. Where they differ, agree one mapping first.
The five candidacy checks are explained, with an exam, in the free Module 01.
What goes wrong
- A transcript carries module marks and a final award on different scales, and the two get mixed up.
- Predicted and final results for the same subject appear on different documents and are confused.
- Subjects with similar names at different levels are mapped to one category without anyone approving it.
- Conversion tables are edited mid-cycle without versioning, so early and late applicants are treated differently.
- Transcripts photographed at an angle or in poor light lose digits in the grade column. Flag them for a person rather than accepting a partial read.
Questions we get
Does the agent decide who is admitted?
No. It reads documents and builds a comparable record. It does not rank applicants, weigh personal statements or recommend offers. Committees and admissions staff decide, with the same facts presented in the same way for every applicant, and with a link back to the original document behind each figure they rely on.
How does it handle qualifications from other countries?
It reads documents in many languages and layouts, but it converts grades only through tables your office has approved. A qualification with no approved conversion is shown as written and routed to a named staff member. Their decision is added to the tables, so the next applicant with that qualification is treated the same way.
Can it detect forged transcripts?
It can flag inconsistencies: dates that do not line up, grades outside the stated scale, a layout that differs from other documents from the same institution. It cannot confirm authenticity. That needs the issuing institution or a verification service. Flags go into your existing verification procedure, and the agent draws no conclusion on its own.
What about applicants' personal data?
The agent runs in your own account and reads only the documents submitted with the application. Access is logged, retention follows your policy and the rules that apply to you, and your privacy notice should tell applicants that software helps read their documents. Nothing is used to train a model outside your account.
Want this agent on your process?
Tell us about your version of this process — volumes, systems, what goes wrong. A person answers with an approach and a price, usually within two working days, or tells you it is the wrong project.