Design of a computerized medical school admissions process

A Computerized Admissions Process (CAP) was developed for the St. Louis University School of Medicine. This system is written in MUMPS and currently runs on a Tandem Computer System located at the Medical School. The system was designed to achieve several important goals. First, the system must be interactive, providing full integration of various clerical, word processing and administrative functions that comprise the admissions process. Second, there must be a capability for user-defined screening criteria. Third, data entry must be minimized. Fourth, the system must be designed to allow reconfiguration in order to reflect prossible future changes in the overall admissions process. A discussion of the present admissions system as a single "state" of a more Generalized Action System (GAS) is presented.