New Student Admissions

Every applicant belongs to a school year. Selecting the correct year before you begin prevents most of the rework in admissions.

Required Access

Admissions — Edit

Accepting or denying an applicant, and setting any student to Enrolled, additionally requires the Admissions — Admin level.

Admissions is found under Students ▸ Admissions. That page provides the overview, the working list, and the means of creating new students. This guide follows one applicant from creation to enrollment; the companion page, Confirming Returning Students, covers students already at the school.

Start in the year the student will attend

This step accounts for more rework than any other, so it is addressed first.

Every part of a student’s enrollment — grade, status, homeroom — is stored per school year. The New Student button creates the student in whichever year is selected in the header, and no later action moves that record to a different year automatically.

Use the year chooser in the top bar (the calendar icon showing the year name) to select the year the student will actually attend. A family applying in March for the coming August belongs in the coming year; a family applying in March to start the following week belongs in the current one.

When the selected year is not your school’s current year, the year name in the header is shown in bold red. Use that as a prompt to confirm the year before entering any data.

Switching years requires the Year Access permission. At the View Past Years level the coming year remains fully editable — only earlier years become read-only — so admissions staff do not require full year access to prepare ahead.

The Admissions page

Students ▸ Admissions opens on two grids, each broken down by grade level. Enrollment Status counts every student in the selected year by status; Enrollment Category counts only enrolled students, by the way in which they came to be enrolled. Click any cell, row total, or column heading to open the admissions list filtered to exactly that figure.

Three buttons above the first grid open the list directly:

Button	Shows
Complete list	Every student in the selected year, regardless of status.
In process	Returning confirmed, returning unconfirmed, and accepted — students who have a place but are not yet enrolled.
Pending	Applied — new applicants awaiting a decision.

The list is a working tool rather than a static report. It carries the admissions detail (application, evaluation, interview, recommendation), filters by grade, status, category, and gender, exports to CSV, and allows rows to be selected so that Change status can be applied to all of them at once.

Enrollment statuses and categories

A student’s status records their standing with the school for that year. It is the single most important field on the record, because reports, class rosters, and billing all read it.

Code	Status	What it means
A	Applied (new potential)	A new applicant. No decision has been made.
L	Waitlist	Not accepted, or held for a place.
P	Accepted (not yet enrolled)	Offered a place; has not started.
E	Enrolled	Actively attending.
R	Returning confirmed	A current student whose family has confirmed for the year.
C	Returning unconfirmed	Expected back; not yet confirmed.
H	Homeschool	Homeschooled under the school’s oversight.
T	Transfer	Transferred to another school.
W	Withdrawn midyear	Left during the year.
I	Inactive	Not attending this year.

Category records how the student arrived, and is what identifies how many of this year’s enrolled students are new:

Code	Category	Meaning
S	New student	First-time enrollment at this school.
R	Returning	Continuing from a previous year.
M	Maybe	Return not yet confirmed.
N	No	Will not be returning.
W	Withdrawn	Withdrew from enrollment.
P	Part time	Enrolled on a part-time basis.

A student created through New Student starts as Applied / New student.

Step 1 — Create the student, family and guardians

The student record

With the correct year selected, click New Student on the Admissions page and complete the six required fields: first name, last name, gender, birthdate, preferred language, and grade level.

As the name is entered, Mosaic searches for people already on file and lists them under Similar Existing Contacts. Expand a row to see the birthdate, gender and current status.

If the student already exists — a former student, or a contact from an inquiry form — select their row and click Proceed to convert that person into a student.
If none of the suggestions match, tick “I have reviewed the suggestions and this person is not already in the system” and click Create New Contact.

Mosaic then opens the new student’s Enrollment tab, with a status of Applied.

The family record

Every student belongs to a family, which groups siblings together and links them to their guardians, home address and financial account.

Open the Family tab and click Create or select family.
Enter the Family Name (for example, “Smith, John & Maria”) and the Preferred Language.
Mosaic searches for similar existing families. Select the family if it already exists; otherwise tick the confirmation checkbox and click Create New Family.

The guardians

From the Family tab, click New Guardian and complete the relationship (Father, Mother, Guardian), first and last name, cellphone, email and preferred language. Gender is filled in from the relationship.

As with students, Mosaic lists similar existing contacts — a guardian who is already the parent of another student should be selected rather than created again. Repeat for each additional guardian.

Step 2 — Complete the record

Back on the Enrollment tab, three panels hold the rest of the student’s details. Each has its own Edit button.

Enrollment Status — grade level, section, homeroom, status and category, plus a late start date where one applies.
Student Details — preferred name, legal first and last name, the student’s language preferences (up to three), and the Family Report Language, which report cards and family correspondence are written in.
Demographics — former school, nationality, ethnicity, religion, home language and the remaining demographic fields.

The Admissions Process panel records the dates and outcomes of the admission itself: application complete, evaluation date and who conducted it, interview date and who conducted it, the interviewer’s recommendation, and the student’s first day.

Step 3 — Work the admissions checklist

Admissions Checklist

The checklist is your school’s own list of what an applicant must complete, and it is the same list the Admissions Summary reads, so the panel and the report always agree. Each item is shown as Done, Waived, or Pending, and is of one of three kinds:

Data field — a built-in check, such as the application date being recorded, the date of birth being on file, the birth record being verified, or the evaluation and interview being complete. Completing the Admissions Process panel above is what marks these rows as done.
Document — a file uploaded to the student and tagged with a particular document type.
Admissions step — a free-text item that admissions staff mark complete manually, such as a pastoral reference.

Any user with Edit-level Admissions can Mark complete an item, or Waive it with a reason where it genuinely does not apply. Waived items are excluded from the outstanding-items alert, and the reason remains on the record for later review.

The list is configured once per school, under School Settings ▸ Admissions Requirements — see Admissions Requirements. Each requirement can be designated waivable or not — a pastoral reference may be waived, a birth certificate should not be — and given an Effective from date, so that students accepted before that date are not retroactively marked incomplete.

Referral Source

How the family heard about the school, and what influenced their decision to apply. Record only the one or two decisive reasons: this feeds the referral statistics on Students ▸ Reports ▸ Student Statistics, and a record with eight factors selected yields no usable finding.

Enrollment Journal

A dated narrative of the admission: status changes, notifications sent, and any notes added by staff. Interview notes recorded here appear on the Admissions Summary, so a committee can review them without each member opening the profile separately.

Step 4 — Review the applicants and decide

Admissions decisions are usually made about a group rather than one student at a time. Students ▸ Admissions ▸ Summary Report prints one card per candidate, in grade order, with the information a committee requires on a single page: age and birthdate, background, guardians and their contact details, family connections (enrolled and former siblings, a parent on staff, a parent who is an alumnus, a district transfer), siblings also applying this year, the admissions process dates, the interview and evaluation notes, and the journal. A red alert lists what is still outstanding; a green tile replaces it when the checklist is complete. A notice appears when no guardian has both an email address and a phone number on file.

The report can be filtered by name or ID and printed, and Export checklist exports the outstanding items to a spreadsheet.

Accept or deny

On the student’s Enrollment tab, two buttons appear on the Enrollment panel — Accepted and Not accepted — but only when the student’s status is Applied, the family’s report language is set, and the user holds Admissions — Admin.

Accepted prompts for confirmation, then records the acceptance date and the accepting user, stores the student’s first day, sets the status to Accepted (not yet enrolled), emails the guardians the acceptance letter in their language, and records both events in the journal. If the student is already actively enrolled at another school in the district, Mosaic reports this, so that the student is not counted and billed at both schools.

Not accepted sends the corresponding letter and sets the student to Waitlist, which retains the application on file rather than discarding it.

If a decision must be reversed, the actions menu (the ⋮ button on the Enrollment panel) offers Clear acceptance status, which returns the student to Applied and sends no notification.

Step 5 — Move accepted students to Enrolled

Accepted students are not yet enrolled. They become Enrolled when the year begins and they start attending.

For an individual student, edit the Enrollment panel on their profile. For a group, open Students ▸ Admissions ▸ In process, select the students who have started, and click Change status ▸ Enrolled. Both routes require the Admin level.

This matters beyond record-keeping: class rosters, the Student Statistics report, the annual checks on Settings ▸ School ▸ Setup Health, and the retention rate all count students whose status is exactly Enrolled.

Adding a sibling

Where the family already exists in Mosaic, the fastest route is to create the new student from the sibling who is already enrolled:

Open the existing sibling’s profile and go to their Enrollment tab.
In the Siblings panel, click New Sibling.
Complete the same fields as a new student.

The sibling is linked automatically to the correct family, guardians and financial account, so the family and guardian steps above can be skipped entirely. Complete the record from Step 2 onward.

Applicants for a future school year

Applications for the coming year should be created in the coming year, for one reason: the student rollover that builds next year’s list copies only students whose status was Enrolled or Homeschool. An applicant whose status is Applied or Accepted in the current year is not carried forward, and will be absent when the new year opens.

If an applicant has already been created in the wrong year, the record does not need to be re-created. Switch to the correct year, open the student’s Enrollment tab, and use New Enrollment Record to create a record in that year with the appropriate grade and status. The person, the family, and the admissions history are unaffected.

What happens next

Once a cohort has been accepted and enrolled, the remainder of the year’s setup can draw on it:

Classes and rosters — see Modify Class Roster.
Billing — a payment contract can be generated for any student who is enrolled, returning, or accepted; see Payment Contracts.
Setup Health — Settings ▸ School ▸ Setup Health carries an annual section that checks each year’s readiness, including whether any students are enrolled and whether enrolled students have a guardian on file.

FAQ

Why can’t I see the Accepted button?

It appears only when the student’s status is Applied, their family report language is set, and the user holds the Admissions — Admin level. A missing report language is by far the most common cause: Mosaic will not send an acceptance letter without knowing which language to send it in.

I changed a student to Enrolled and it did not save.

Setting a status to Enrolled is reserved for the Admissions — Admin level. At the Edit level the remainder of the edit is saved, the status is left unchanged, and a warning is displayed. Ask an administrator to make the change, or accept the student with the Accepted button.

A family applied for next year, but I created the student in this year. What should I do?

Switch to the correct year with the year chooser, open the student’s Enrollment tab, and use New Enrollment Record to create their record in that year. Then remove the record from the incorrect year with Remove current year in the actions menu, which Mosaic permits only while the student has no classes in that year.

Can a student exist without a family?

Yes, but the family record should be created as soon as possible. Guardian correspondence, the financial account and report card delivery all depend on it.

What should I do if I created a duplicate student by mistake?

Contact your system administrator. Duplicate records have to be merged or removed at the database level to avoid data inconsistencies.