Hull's admissions team was not failing. It was doing everything correctly and still losing ground. Gunel McLaughlin explains what changed.
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Two admissions processes at Hull cost £527,113 a year and took up the equivalent of fifteen full time roles. One was verifying documents for international postgraduate applicants. The other was answering fee status queries.
Neither of them is the admissions decision. They are the steps an applicant waits through before anyone can make one. That wait lands at the worst possible moment, on the applicants comparing offers, working to visa deadlines and least willing to sit and wait.
That is a specific kind of failure, and it is not the one institutions plan for. Nothing breaks. The work still gets done. It just gets done slightly later each cycle. In a market where speed to decision drives conversion, slightly later is how you lose applicants to institutions that were not better, only faster.
Applications were rising. Headcount was not. Hull had to handle more of them without lowering standards and without extra budget.
What happened nextAll four figures are delivered results, not projections. Hull built a full business case on two of the six processes. It shows the investment paying for itself in under four months.
Read the full Hull case study ›
This is a working session, not a product demo. Gunel walks through the decisions, in order.
How Hull put a cost against two processes, hour by hour, and found £527,113 a year sitting inside one department.
Six processes across the applicant journey, from document submission to confirmation. No system replaced. No migration. No new headcount.
What a finance team needs to see, and how to bring academic and professional services colleagues with you.
On confirmation weekend the team of sixteen finished early on the Saturday and moved on to further applicant work instead of working late.
Director of Admissions, Academic Services, University of Hull
CEO and Founder, Niico
Anyone accountable for how long an applicant waits.
Wednesday 9 September 2026, 12:00 to 12:45 BST. If you cannot make it live, register anyway and we will send you the recording.
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