Email is a terrible database
Threads fork. Attachments duplicate. “Did we accept them?” becomes a search exercise. Intake deserves states: received, incomplete, review, accepted, waitlist, declined.
Minimum fields that matter
- Applicant identity
- Program / track
- Status + owner
- Document checklist
- Last touch date
What Gateway ITE taught us
Moving off paper and triple-typed data cut admin overhead dramatically — because staff stopped re-entering the same student into three places. The win was operational, not aesthetic.