SchoolMint

Pros

The ease in communicating with our entire school community. The ability to sort and download the information. The ease in which we can conduct our lotteries, and sort and organize our waitlist. The quick reaction time for customer support when small issues arise. The ability to build our own forms to our own specs so we can collect information for our specific needs and state requirements. The companies quick and open response to suggestions from and accommodations for their clients. And the overall respect with which they treat their clients. This all contributes to the whole sense of family and a caring community.

Cons

I only wish they also supported a database!
The most difficult thing about having online paperwork is making sure everyone has access and knowledge on how to use it. SchoolMint is wonderful about helping the families with issues, but they can't help with everyone having access! :)

Pros

We use Smart Choice for our online applications and lotteries and recently added their services for permits, which is going great! I love the customer support. The reps are always quick and responsive to even the smallest issue and if my rep is unavailable, someone else responds on her behalf right away. Working collaboratively with the reps and developers is my favorite thing - no question goes unanswered, I can't say enough about how important and impressive that is.
One of my favorite features which is absolutely worth the money is the scheduling feature!! What a time saver and so easy to use!
I also love that I can create my own deliverables and customize how I use them.
The lotteries have worked very well for us and we have a lot of custom priorities that the system handles very well.

Cons

Like the other reviewers, I feel that creating reports is the most tedious and unintuitive part of the system. Lots and lots of trial and error in that area. We can finally duplicate a report which is helpful to a least have some of the info already available when creating a new report. Luckily the reps and develops are helpful, but I would like to be able to do more of it myself. Now that we use Smart Choice for our permits in addition to our lottery, it is a little confusing go and back and forth between the newer permit system and the old lottery system. It would be nice if they were they same.
A minor thing I don't like in the new system, is that I can't see the parent notes without clicking on them, in the old system I could see all of the notes at the same time.
Another thing that would be helpful is to be able to sort by more than one column header while looking at the application management page. Filters are useful for the most part, but sometimes the extra layer of sorting would be helpful.

Pros

Easy to setup, easy to communicate with various groups, fairly intuitive. Forms are simple to put together but a little but limited in what you can do.

Cons

Reporting is so-so, I wish it were more customizable. The search feature is limited (you can't search for a parent name). If you want to export your data into your SIS system - good luck, it takes them a month to create the file!

Pros

It is 100% online. This alone has saved our campuses many hours in going through paper applications and parents can chose more than 1 school at the same time without having to complete a new paper application.

I love the conditional formatting, scheduling of messages and the defaulting of today's date enhancements added this year.

We are able to get incoming students set up very quickly for testing or find potential needs for students earlier by collecting the information earlier in the process than we have in the past since the forms are so easy to use online.

Wonderful tool to collect enrollment data and create projections when we start year 3. This helps locate the grades of greatest needs so we can concentrate marketing in the locations and grades we need as well.

Cons

No way to stop users from creating multiple accounts year to year when they cannot remember their password or username - I have parents with 3 user names for 1 student and 3 siblings with different usernames. We send them the username in all communication, but parents still create new accounts!
We would really love a view only or a way for certain groups to be able to print their own forms, such as Nurses or principals. We would not want them having the ability to make any changes, but if they could look at the information and print out anything pertaining to their department, then this would eliminate the need for the registrar to do it for them.
The feeder campuses and administration would love a way to see which campus the re-enrolled student came from the prior year. For example, the Junior High campus cannot see which elementary campus the re-enrolled student came from. Since we are open boundaries, there are 5 elementaries that feed into 2 different junior highs. But the student can pick either junior high. So to get the records to the right school, I have to go through and find the info student by student since I have full access.

Pros

My favorite feature of Smart Choice is the parent portal. This feature allows me to have an excellent understanding and overall view of the parent experience, as well as insight to help parents troubleshoot any issues they are experiencing. The software is highly-customize-able, which works for our organization. There hasn't been any system upgrades we have requested that they are not able to do. I like that we have one contact for support. I am willing to sacrifice a support line for our one contact of support because she has a comprehensive understanding of how we use the software and is always able to follow along quickly with our issues and requests.

Cons

The most difficult part of Smart Choice is filtering the data and building reports. The reporting feature only allows for "and" filters. It would be nice to have the option of "or" filters. I wish Smart Choice, on the back-end, had a more updated look-and-feel. It kind of feels like I am in my high school portal from 10 years ago. I also found it difficult to figure out how to create field dependencies when creating form steps. Once you understand how it works, you can replicate the steps, however, it is not intuitive at first and there was a lot of trial and error.