Online postgraduate admission system a case study

Abstract

The admission procedures of universities worldwide, mainly for a sharp strike in number of potential applicants for university studies, are experiencing a competitive environment nowadays. Globalization has created a new dimension in this field as well. Students from all over the world are applying to different countries to study abroad. An admission process can be centralized or can be run by departments/institutes individually. Many developed countries have stepped forward to automated online admission systems from the pen and paper method. But in spite of technological advancement, still many universities in developing countries process their procedures manually, which is very inefficient, time-consuming, requiring lot of effort. This project will focus on the development of an online system for the postgraduate admission of a department/institute of a university. Here the students and the administration both can access their parts and can be facilitated using this online system. The online system will enable tracking all the details of an applicant from the start of the online application to the end of admission which can be used for all reporting purposes. ‘Waterfall Process Model’ has been used to develop the whole software. The designed online admission system has two modules. One is for the applicants and the other is for the administrator. In the applicant’s module a candidate can submit their application to their desired programs. In this module they check their application status, print their admit cards for the written admission test if they get selected for the test. The authorized person of the administration can update notices as well as can evaluate the submitted applications of the applicants. For the system implementation or execution, a webserver named WampServer 3.1.9 has been used as a Windows web development environment. In the front end, for server-side web development, Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP-5.6.40) as scripting language, Bootstrap, an open source of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3) for responsive design as well as jQuery for dynamic scripting have been used. MySQL-5.7.26 as database has been used for relational database server. Unit testing and system testing were performed before the software was finalized. Implementation in broad scale with online payment and online examination system, can be done in future. The system developed here met the expected requirements. So, this can be easily adopted by any educational institution.