Philippine Military Academy Entrance Examination Online Application

Abstract

By tradition, applicants to the PMA entrance examinations are processed using two systems – mail and walk-in. if a candidate applied by mail, he fills up a form together with some documents and PMA replied with an examination permit for those who meet the requirement. In the other method, applicants are allowed to register directly with the exam proctors on the examination day.

These systems have been tried and proven all these years. The main drawback for these systems is cost and human error. In the “mail” system, a substantial amount is allocated every year for replying and mailing the exam permits. For the walk-in system “walk-in” applicant, information has to be encoded and this takes time and effort, not to mention errors, in the encoding process. Though encoding can be eliminated through the use of optical mark reader (OMR) forms, time and encoding cost is replaced with the actual costs of the OMR sheets. Another disadvantage of the “walk-in” systems is that administrators have no way of predicting the number of candidates who will take the exam.

By volume, mailing cost and OMR forms for the personal data of applicants will weigh heavily on the resources of the Academy.

In the Philippines, statistics show that most schools and universities have Internet access, in the Filipino home, the penetration is still relatively low but gaining momentum. More and more youth and young professionals are using the Internet not only for browsing and research but for online services.

With this in mind, a prototype of the project was tested and implemented from July 28 to August 18, 2005, and again from April 1 to August 17, 2006, for the entrance exam conducted on August 28, 2005, and August 27, 2006, respectively. Base on the statistics on the total number of applicants, the only application constituted 48% in 2005 and 71.02%in 2006 of the total number of applicants.

The Reuse Prototyping Model was used for this project simply because an existing prototype system is already present, and it is just a matter of enhancing the existing prototype.

Inter-action with users, the applicant, and the concerned office, was greatly encouraged for enhancement and improvement of the system.