Nestled in the foothills of Mount Scorpion in Henderson, Nevada State College is the first public, four-year institution in the state. The college is home to 5,500 students and is designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution, a majority of whom are first-generation students. Nevada State College offers three schools: School of Education, School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and School of Nursing. The college is known for its green-friendly culture that includes energy-efficient buildings, open community spaces with solar panels, and an organic teaching garden.

Jenna Eastman, Assistant Director of Financial Aid at Nevada State College, said it took her staff six to eight weeks to review verification documents. While her team utilized an internal online platform that relieved some problems – like notifying students if they left incomplete forms – it didn’t solve everything.

“Some documents didn’t get flagged correctly in order for processing to be completed,” said Eastman. This, along with high call volume regarding verification questions, left minimal time for staff to counsel students about financial aid.

Nevada State College’s sister institution, College of Southern Nevada, already had Verification Gateway (VG) in place. This, Eastman said, made choosing a third-party solution easy. Verification Gateway from Inceptia is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. Offering interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, complete reporting and personal interaction when needed, VG enables schools to process and package aid faster.

“Our main criteria for outsourcing a solution was making sure verifications would be done more efficiently so we’d have more time to counsel students,” Eastman said. “Inceptia met the criteria so we simply tagged on to College of Southern Nevada’s contract.”

Since VG’s inception in 2018, Eastman was impressed with the results.

“We very rarely had a student walk in or call and ask about verification anymore,” Eastman said. “We could sit down with students and hear what they were saying rather than thinking in our heads ‘oh gosh, I’ve got 10 more students waiting to ask about verifications.”

Initially, students were hesitant about using VG.

“They would tell our staff they wanted to talk to a ‘real’ financial aid person,” Eastman said. “But when they started to experience VG at its complete capacity, students realized how easy the verification process was. The negative feedback died down quickly,” Eastman said.

To learn more about Verification Gateway, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.

Located in the heart of downtown Chicago, Loyola University has been making a name for itself since its debut in 1870. Loyola is a private, Catholic university nationally recognized for its elite academic and Division 1 athletic programs. 93 percent of faculty own the highest degree in their fields and students benefit from a small student-faculty ratio. Beyond the classroom and sports, Loyola is committed to caring for its Chicago home. With more than 17,000 students – 11,000 undergraduates – there are plenty of hands to help keep the city of Chicago thriving. Students clean up parks and neighborhoods, mentor children, and run farmers markets to make healthy food more accessible to the Chicago community.

Tobyn Friar, Director of Financial Aid at Loyola, said as the student enrollment increased it put a burden on his financial aid staff to collect, review, and update verification. 26 percent of students are Pell Grant eligible, which made verification an overwhelming task.

“The extra work we had took us away from spending quality time with students and parents,” Friar said. “We weren’t able to walk them through all of their financial aid options. We weren’t providing poor customer service, but there is a level of expectation of service that comes with a private university that we weren’t giving.”

Friar knew he needed a verification solution to help his team. Rather than hiring additional staff, Friar opted to find a third-party solution. Verification Gateway (VG) from Inceptia is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. With interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, reporting and personal interaction if needed, VG was the service-oriented solution for Loyola. “I easily submitted an online request form to Inceptia to learn more and here we are today!” Friar said. “Initial outreach to Inceptia was really great. Within a week of sending the request form, we had a demo call scheduled with the Inceptia team, Inceptia’s IT staff, and our IT/Operations staff.”

“We waited to officially launch VG because we didn’t want to do it mid-year,” Friar said. “Inceptia was ready to go as soon as we were, and they were so responsive to all of our questions.” Friar also believed that while VG did help his team by lessening their workload, the students ultimately benefited. “When verifications are completed more efficiently, students move through the financial aid process faster.”

Loyola needed students to be verified only if they were admitted to the university – and Inceptia made it happen.

“I know Inceptia customizes solutions like we requested for other schools, but the way they did it felt like it was just for us,” Friar said. “They partnered with us every step of the way.”

Since VG’s inception in November 2019, student foot traffic and call volume already decreased. “Before VG, we were fielding approximately 34,000 calls a year,” Friar said. “It was a huge win for our team to implement VG because we could get back to the core of our work.” Students and parents can contact Inceptia’s customer service, rather than the university, regarding verification questions.

The core of their work is educating students on basic financial concepts. “Using VG gave us more time back to educate students on financial aid and how to pay for college successfully,” Friar said.

Friar said without an outsourced solution, verifications would have continued to take longer to process and affected student retention rates.

“Retention is very competitive in the Chicago university market,” Friar said. “When we completed verifications in-house, the typical turnaround time was seven to 10 days, and 12 to 15 days during our peak season. Since VG, our turnaround time was two days.”

Friar said most university financial aid departments feel understaffed and are always looking for additional resources. “Verification is by far the most cumbersome task to complete,” Friar said. “It can only be a benefit to add VG to your school because the pros far outweigh the cons.”

To learn more about Verification Gateway, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.

Louisiana Community Technical College System (LCTCS) is comprised of 12 community and technical colleges across the state and is committed to serving all students – regardless of geographical, financial, or scholastic barriers. Students can obtain associate degrees, technical diplomas, and industry-based certificates that earn them satisfying jobs. Students can also enter a STEM program, transfer to a four-year university, and finish their high school diploma. In the 2018/2019 school year, more than 30,000 students graduated from LCTCS. Multiple colleges with a variety of educational and workforce opportunities for students keep staff and faculty busy, including those in the enrollment financial aid offices.

Dr. Amy Cable, Executive Director of Enrollment Management Support at LCTCS, oversees the system’s enrollment and financial aid processing. Smaller staff size and high student demands posed an issue for each college when it came to verification processing.

"Some colleges processed verifications in-house and saw students at the same time; it became a problem so the colleges wanted to explore the idea of outsourcing," Cable said. "The LCTCS pursued an RFP (Request for Proposal) in 2017 and Inceptia really stood out." Cable already heard of Inceptia prior to her time at LCTCS and knew they would be a competitive solution. The solution was implemented at four of its respective colleges and led by the college’s enrollment and financial aid teams.

Cable and the team of colleges looked for the following components in a verification solution: implementation and maintenance services; user-friendly adaptability; efficient processing; quick turnaround time; call center for students; timely communication to students and colleges; and a customized pricing structure.

"Inceptia’s Verification Gateway (VG) solution is a trusted name in the business and our solution boxes got checked,” Cable said. “The pricing component was a big decision-making factor because each college paid for completed verifications and not a flat rate."

Verification Gateway is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. Offering interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, complete reporting and personal interaction when needed, Verification Gateway enables schools to process and package aid faster.

Four of the 12 colleges utilized VG: Fletcher Technical Community College (2,098 enrollment); Delgado Community College (13,173 enrollment); Central Louisiana Technical Community College (1,437 enrollment); and SOWELA Technical Community College (2,950 enrollment).

With the implementation of VG, staff was more readily available to service students and perform other financial aid work. At SOWELA, a front-line staff member who used VG on a regular basis said her workload was reduced tremendously. "I no longer had to collect documentation for every student chosen for the different types of verification, make needed corrections on the student FAFSA, contact students because of missing information, and store incomplete paperwork. Instead, I had time to counsel students, assist at high school FAFSA completion events, and help with other duties in the office."

Michelle Greco, Director of Enrollment Management at Delgado Community College, said fewer students visit the office with verification questions because VG made the process simple and user-friendly. When questions arose, students contacted Inceptia’s call center, which freed up Greco’s staff to help students with other financial aid questions. She was also pleased with Inceptia’s customer service.

"Their customer service was outstanding,” Greco said. “They reached out to our management team the moment a student called with additional questions or concerns, and they worked with us to ensure the college and Inceptia were communicating a unified message to students."

And while the first year posed some growing pains, Inceptia’s team was quick to resolve them. The team went onsite to the system and individual colleges to fix system bugs in VG and re-evaluated contract agreements to reflect better accuracy of processing time for students. "Inceptia corrected things right away," Cable said.

To learn more about Verification Gateway, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.

Housatonic Community College is one of 12 community colleges in the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system and is located in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city. Housatonic is devoted to serving students in all capacities of their journeys: whether they want to transfer to a four-year institution, earn an associate degree, or jump straight into the workforce. Housatonic also provides seminars and workshops to fulfill students’ community and personal enrichment needs. Because of the many geographic locations Housatonic serves, its student population varies in economic backgrounds and financial aid plays a big role in helping students pay for college.

Housatonic’s decreased staffing levels in the Financial Aid Office had the potential to be a sizeable challenge for processing verification. The team had taken steps to clean up a previously paper-heavy process, overcome the over-stuffed file cabinets, and increase reporting accuracy. Still, the smaller staff was concerned about falling behind in completing verifications and the overall impact it would have on students. Housatonic wanted to find a solution that made the entire process easier for students to be awarded financial aid.

Omar Livingston, Director of Financial Aid at Housatonic, selected Verification Gateway (VG) as its solution because of the electronic and efficient platform it provided. Verification Gateway from Inceptia is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. Offering interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, complete reporting and personal interaction when needed, VG enables schools to process and package aid faster.

"We had a reduction in paperwork and students were awarded much quicker than in the past,” said Livingston. “Even during our busy season in July and August, VG made it less chaotic."

As a parent, Livingston also noticed how quick and easy the verification process was.

"My son was a freshman and selected for verification,” said Livingston. “He created his account online with VG, submitted the paperwork, and his verification was reviewed within two days. He was then awarded financial aid shortly after. Everything was right on schedule and came through quickly."

"One concern we had before implementing VG was from the technology standpoint,” Livingston said. “As an inner-city school, we weren’t sure if some of our students would have a hard time navigating this new verification process and technology or have access to it."

Those fears quickly subsided after students learned how to easily navigate VG’s online platform. With computers and tablets available throughout Housatonic’s campus, all students have the ability to access VG.

"The website was very intuitive and easy to navigate,” said Livingston. “The support materials on the website also make it easy to understand how the verification process works."

To learn more about Verification Gateway, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.

As a private liberal-arts college with a smaller enrollment – approximately 3,400 students – DeSales University is anything but small in terms of accredited degree programs, academic and community opportunities, and competitive NCAA Division III athletics. Class sizes are intimate (12:1 ratio) and taught by a majority of faculty members who hold the highest professional degrees.

Regardless of DeSales alluring attributes, Joyce Farmer, Director of Financial Aid, concluded that in-house verification processes didn’t work as efficiently as needed causing delays in financial aid packaging.

"We struggled to complete the financial aid verification process in an acceptable timeframe from both a billing and financial aid perspective,” Farmer said. “We needed to be able to provide financial aid packages in a timely manner, ensure financial aid and billing were in sync, and provide excellent customer service to families working through the process of paying for college.

Farmer and her team selected Verification Gateway (VG) as their solution in March 2019. Verification Gateway from Inceptia is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. Offering interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, complete reporting and personal interaction when needed, VG enables schools to process and package aid faster.

The partnership between DeSales and Inceptia proved to be effective from the start. Inceptia team members worked closely with Farmer’s staff to provide in-house training of Verification Gateway’s intuitive system. Once training concluded, Inceptia’s customer service continued to ensure Farmer’s staff was completely well-trained.

"VG is necessary to implement if an academic institution requires fast and efficient financial aid processing," Farmer said.

The end-result was a beyond user-friendly experience for students and families that allowed them to quickly and effectively complete the verification process. Farmer was most pleasantly surprised with the lower call volume from students and families regarding verification questions, and the level of data security Verification Gateway provided. Fewer calls also meant more one-on-one time with students to advise them on other financial aspects. Farmer believes that with verification now outsourced, she and her team can focus on other valuable work that can impact DeSales recruitment and retention efforts.

To learn more about Verification Gateway, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.