How to Set Up the Applicant Portal for Admissions

Every admissions season, counsellors lose hours to one question: "What is the status of my application?" The applicant portal answers it for them. Each student gets a private, token-based link that shows their current admission stage, the documents still pending, and the registration-fee position with no login and no app to install. This guide walks through enabling it for a live application and what the student sees at the other end.

Where the portal fits

The portal is part of ASH's Education CRM. It sits on top of an existing application record, so before you mint a link you need a lead that has been moved into the applications pipeline, with a course, campus and batch attached. Everything the portal displays is pulled live from that record, so you are not maintaining a separate page.

Mint the portal link

Open the applicant in the Applications view and generate the portal link. ASH creates a unique token for that student and builds a shareable URL. Because the link is tied to a token rather than a password, you can send it straight over WhatsApp, SMS or email. Treat it like a private link: anyone who has it can see that student's status, so share it only with the applicant. If a link is ever exposed, mint a fresh one and the old token stops working.

What the applicant sees

The student opens the link and lands on a clean status page headed with their name, course and your institute's name. Below that are three things:

• Their admission stage the current step, written in plain language, so they know exactly where they stand.
• A document checklist every document you have requested, each with a status badge and a field to submit a document link.
• The registration fee the amount, whether it is paid, the payment mode and reference, and a printable confirmation once your team marks it as received.

How updates flow back to your team

When a student submits a document link, it appears against their record for your team to verify and nothing is auto-approved. As your counsellors move the application forward or mark a fee as received, the student's page updates the next time they open it. That single source of truth cuts the back-and-forth to a fraction. For the document side of this, see our guide on collecting and verifying documents online.

A few practical notes

• The page shows a friendly "link not valid" message for expired or wrong tokens, with a prompt to contact the counsellor, so a stale forward never exposes data.
• It is mobile-first, which is how most applicants will open it.
• You control what the fee section says; until you confirm payment, it tells the student their counsellor will share details.

Set it up once per applicant and you replace a stream of status calls with a link students can check themselves.