A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Information Management, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2009

Enrollment management plays a decisive role in the development of universities. Financial aid is a vital part of enrollment management. It strongly affects enrollment decisions of applicants. Proper decisions to allocate financial aid to applicants in time will affect the expected number of enrolled students, especially high ability students. This thesis presents an interactive decision support system to assist admission man-agers in making effective financial aid decisions. The interactive interface presents applicants{u2019} key data in a flexible way to make it easier for admission managers to give effective financial aid decisions. For each applicant, the system suggests the amount of financial aid that will optimize tuition revenue using a probabilistic predictive model. Users can flexibly adjust the financial aid offered in consideration of factors other than revenue maximization such as applicant background, applicant ability, or current financial aid policies. The probability of enrollment for applicants is controllable under changes in financial aid. The system combines internal and external funding for more tuition revenue. Moreover, the system provides a facility to extract the policy implicit in a collection of individual financial aid decisions for purposes of analysis and storage for future use.