Success Strategies for New High School Partners

Getting Started

Welcome! We are excited to have you join us as a Direct Admit Wisconsin participating high school. This resource is meant to provide you critical information about Direct Admit Wisconsin program as well as connect you with resources and tools to have a successful program launch at your high school.

Onboarding Checklist

These are the tasks that all new schools should complete to ensure that they’re set up for success with Direct Admit Wisconsin. A printable version of the onboarding checklist is available at the bottom of this webpage.

• Attend a Direct Admit Information Session to learn more about the program and how to participate
• Complete the New High School Participation Survey
• Sign up for our Direct Admit News updates
• Submit the Direct Admit Wisconsin Data Sharing Agreement
• Build your Direct Admit program team
• Determine the strategy you will use to sign-up participating students (opt-in or opt-out)
• Communicate the participation process to students and families.
• Sign up for a virtual Onboarding Session for technical information on how to implement Direct Admit at your school

High School Responsibilities

We have over 400 high schools participating in Direct Admit Wisconsin. In order to ensure that we have the most accurate information about your students and that their data is processed in a timely fashion, we ask all high schools to be responsible for the following:

• Review the resources and documents available on our High School Resources including our Key Dates
• Engage in and review on-going communications from the Universities of Wisconsin, including, but not limited to:
  • Training materials
  • Direct Admit Wisconsin News emails
  • Webinars
  • Individual calls or emails to address questions.
• Share Direct Admit Wisconsin participation information with students, their families and other high school staff.
• Accomplish key tasks within the appropriate timeline.
• Understand the minimum Direct Admit Wisconsin admission requirements.
• Ensure your high school is able to report a cumulative unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale for all students who elect to participate.
• Set up the appropriate requirements in your SIS to verify student eligibility and extract data to send to the Universities of Wisconsin System Administration.
• SIS notes: JMC is a newer partner with Direct Admit Wisconsin and are still in beta testing. Some SIS systems require more set up and manual work to complete the student identification and verification process.

Best Practices

Managing Direct Admit Wisconsin

Managing Direct Admit Wisconsin is a team process with important roles being played by administrators, counselors and technology team members. It is highly recommended that you identify the key individuals who will play a role in facilitating all the pieces of the Direct Admit Wisconsin program at your high school and/or district. This should include identifying one primary contact from each high school. Because the first data submission opens over the summer, it is helpful to ensure that at least one Direct Admit team member is willing and able to work with student data during the summer months and available for contact.

A typical team might include a principal, a school counselor, and a technology coordinator.

Student Participation Strategy

Identification of participating students is managed at the district and/or high school level. Schools can use an opt-in or opt-out process. If students opt-in, they and their parent(s)/guardian(s) are asked to submit a form confirming their interest in participating. If students opt-out, they and their parent(s)/guardian(s) are asked to submit a form only if they do not wish to participate. In general, we recommend an opt-out strategy, as our data indicates that this strategy significantly increases participation rates.

High schools should ideally try to build the process to solicit student participation throughout their annual enrollment process and/or counseling process.

Communicating About Direct Admit

It is best to share information about Direct Admit Wisconsin with students and families early and often. We recommend sharing information during the start of year activities for juniors as much as possible.

Ensure that all staff at your high school are aware of who the Direct Admit Wisconsin team members are, and communicate relevant information to all staff on a regular basis.