SPR Partners with the School of Art Institute of Chicago to Improve Admissions Decisions after Donating $50K Worth of Machine Learning Services

Over the last year, SPR has worked closely with the School of Art Institute to apply machine learning technology aimed at better predicting student enrollment and advancing admissions strategies

CHICAGO, Jan. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- SPR, a technology modernization firm focused on driving exceptional custom technology and digital experiences, and the School of Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) announced today the results of its recent partnership aimed at using machine learning technology to uncover potential correlations between student engagement at SAIC and enrollment decisions.

Last year, SPR donated $50,000 worth of machine learning services to the SAIC as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations. The machine learning services giveaway was intended to help a local organization that positively impacted the community, but that didn't have access to the right resources that could further their mission. Looking to improve its capacity to predict the decisions of students who are offered admissions, the SAIC had developed its own machine learning models prior to partnering with SPR. However, once in production, they found something was degrading the model's predictions.

"The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is a prestigious institution renowned for its commitment to fostering artistic talent, making it the perfect partner for this project," said SPR Chief Technology Officer Matt Mead. "Like many educational institutions, the school faces the challenge of how to best allocate its limited resources. We were able to work with SAIC to create a new model that fixed issues with data leakage and provided more accurate predictions that will allow them to better manage these resources and improve enrollment outcomes."

In order to predict which accepted students will ultimately enroll in the next academic term, SPR collected and examined key data points throughout the admission process, including:

• The Common Application: A widely used platform that collects standardized information about prospective students
• The candidate management system: Details of the application process
• Students' artistic portfolios: These portfolios, integral to the admissions process at SAIC, offer rich insights into students' creativity, skill, and dedication to the arts. By incorporating portfolio data into the analysis, SPR and SAIC could form a more nuanced understanding of students' profiles and potential.
• Student interactions with the university, such as participation in on-campus events: A student's decision to enroll may be influenced by their experiences with and perceptions of the university environment.

"Right away, we were able to identify certain programs that surprisingly didn't yield well, and see patterns around whether or not prospective students were viewing the school as an interdisciplinary place of study," said Rose Milkowski, Vice President for Enrollment Management at SAIC. "Not only can we start to improve communication around the value of specific programs and school culture, we can also take this approach and repeat it in different situations moving forward. By integrating these insights into our review system, our team will be able to better target future students, ensuring that we accept the best, most diverse class set up for success at SAIC."

The School of Art Institute of Chicago plans to implement this new data and strategic approach to its admissions process moving forward. For additional information on the school and its admissions process, visit its website.

For more information on this project or additional machine learning services, visit SPR's website.

About SPR
Growing companies know the right technology implementation is a balancing act: Address users' expectations today while planning for tomorrow's demands. As a technology modernization firm, SPR helps businesses strike that balance. We build or adapt technology, specializing in custom software development, cloud, data and AI, and user experience solutions. Using a blended-team approach, we integrate our experts with yours to deliver modern platforms and applications that accelerate business growth. SPR's promise: To deliver beyond the build by providing proactive advice, sharing knowledge, responding to change in an agile way, and investing time to deeply understand our clients' business. We're 200+ strategists, developers, designers, and consultants in Chicago and Milwaukee. For more information on how SPR delivers beyond the build for its customers, visit http://www.spr.com.

About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For more than 155 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world's most influential artists, designers, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program ranked number two in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC's undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world, and adults, teens, and kids in our Continuing Studies classes have the opportunity to explore their creative sides, build portfolios, and advance their skills. Notable alumni and faculty include Georgia O'Keeffe, Nick Cave, David Sedaris, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cynthia Rowley, Michelle Grabner, Richard Hunt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jeff Koons.

Media Contact

Lindsey Harrison, Walker Sands, 630-730-1808, [email protected], www.walkersands.com

SOURCE SPR