Expert Systems for University Admissions

This paper describes the construction of an expert system to help the admissions tutor for a university degree in business and management which receives some 2000 applications for entry each year, using the SAGE shell. What originally began as a ‘demonstrator project’ is shown to be of practical value, in terms of both producing a usable expert system and clarifying and questioning the selection criteria used by the admissions tutor. A particular conclusion emerging from this work which may be relevant to many expert systems applications is that ethical and practical considerations dictated that some questions involving judgement could not be delegated by the admissions tutor to the clerical staff. It thus became necessary to develop two versions of the expert system, one a full ‘admissions-tutor system’, the other a more limited version for day-to-day use.