Including an application step in your admissions funnel is a great way to filter the exact students you want in your cohort and elevate the quality of your course community.

It does add another operational step in that you have to review student applications and accept them. Here's what it looks like from a student's perspective:

Instant Pay means you convert prospects in the moment; it takes strong messaging and a great marketing funnel to get someone from visiting your course landing page to paying upwards of $1,000. When you employ applications in your admissions flow, you're committing to lengthening your sales pipeline.

You need to think about the application flow as a part of the sales process. Even though they've applied, they still need to be convinced. That means you need to be responsive and send them an acceptance quickly. It's generally important to get an acceptance into the inbox of an applicant within 48 hours.

Your acceptance email should be a celebration of the student and their success. The default acceptance email reinforces the fact that they're joining an exclusive group of handpicked peers. It also gives them a single call-to-action: enroll for the course.

Applications widen the top of your funnel. Because there's no money exchanged immediately, more prospects are likely to submit an application knowing they don't have to make a "final decision" (read: payment) until later.

Applications offer you an opportunity to filter for your ideal student. Especially early on, it's important for you to find product-market fit, your course being your product. You originally developed course content with a specific student in mind so applications are a great way to test your original hypothesis.

Applications help you learn about your market. Whether or not you intended for them to find your course, you may discover a market niche you previously didn't consider. You may be thinking about teaching beginner engineers but you may get a lot of senior engineer applications. First, you'll want to adjust your marketing material to speak more to your ideal student. Second, you'll want to create a new course for senior engineers!

Maven always collects the applicants' name, preferred name, and email address. Preferred name is a great way to capture how a student wants to be addressed. In case you need to look someone up, or write a personalized email, you'll know how to address them. In your email variables {{StudentName}} will first try and use the Preferred name. If it's not available, it will use the student's full name.

Beyond these 3 pieces of information, Maven defaults to collecting:

These are default on but you can easily toggle them off.

These questions help you quickly understand the type of applicant you're getting. That said, you may want more detailed or industry-specific information. Some popular questions that tend to provide valuable insights:

Be thoughtful about what questions are required and what information is a nice-to-have. Work backwards and think about the information you need to to make an admissions decision. Having a lot of required questions may push away potential prospects who grow tired of a lengthy application. While it's useful to weed out the prospects who aren't committed, you don't want to overdo it.

3 things to remember with your applications: