Portal Experience
The old portal experience revolved around the applications you were submitting. It didn't allow us to connect until after you started an application. Our new Via portal allows us to take a holistic approach to advising and guiding students through the abroad experience as soon as they join the Aggie family. Let’s briefly explore how Via will allow us to do that.
The new portal experience focuses on you, the traveler. When we launched the portal in June, we invited all Aggies to log in to the new portal and look at what we have to offer. Part of the login experience is intake questions. Many of these are routine questions that will pre-fill from Howdy, but what we love are the questions that give you an opportunity to share::
- What you have questions or concerns about
- How you may want to pay for your experiences, including I'm not sure
- Whether you receive scholarships or financial aid
- Why you are interested in global opportunities
- If you've ever left your home country before
- Your passport status
- How you feel about going on a program
This will allow us to better serve you at the front desk, over the phone, and during advising appointments. No matter who serves you, we will know you better and can tailor our conversation to
you.
Our new portal has robust program matching thanks to The Program Match Quiz feature that allows you to answer a few questions to help you find the best program. You have the option to share with us:
- Types of programs you're interested in
- How long you'd like to study and when
- Where you'd like to go and if you want language immersion
- Types of housing arrangments you're interested in, from host family to private or shared apprtments
- Subjects you're interested in studying
You are also given the opportunity to rank the listed items above in order of importance for you. While the Program Match Quiz is not required, it is a great resource if you do not know where to start.
The old portal had a clunky, hard-to-use search system that made finding programs difficult if you were unfamiliar with what programs Education Abroad offers. Searches were not dynamically editable, meaning you would have to start over every time you wished to change your search parameters, and it was difficult and, in some cases, impossible to favorite or save programs for later.
In the new EA portal, the experience is much smoother, and it starts with you in mind. Since we know
who you are
first, programs that match what you have shared are front and center. You can dynamically filter and update the list on the same screen
without starting over, and with a real-time search bar, it is much easier to browse through programs. Find a program you like? You can favorite the program to revisit again later by clicking the heart icon located at the top of every brochure (not shown in example below).
