CCCApply: Common Application For Admission
CCCApply is the online gateway to the California Community Colleges. Each year at our 116 colleges, 1.8 million students from all over the world build their career skills, prepare for transfer to four-year colleges and universities, or simply enrich their lives through learning.
To date, more than 20 million online applications have been processed through CCCApply.
Recently redesigned with a student-centered approach, CCCApply streamlines the application process for students and staff. The redesign includes a full Spanish translation and is mobile-friendly across all CCCApply applications. The CCCApply suite offers four applications to meet students’ diverse needs:
- Standard application for U.S. residents
- California College Promise Grant application (formerly known as the Board of Governors Fee Waiver application)
- A streamlined Noncredit application
- International application
CCCApply Milestones
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2012: The CCCApply standard (U.S. domestic) application was launched as part of a new suite of student-centric, online applications built on the CCC Systemwide Technology Platform. CCCApply standard application is now live at all 116 colleges.
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2014: The California College Promise Grant was launched. It is currently being used at 45 colleges.
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2016: The International Application was launched. It is currently live at 19 colleges.
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2018: A Noncredit Application workflow was implemented for domestic (U.S.) students enrolling exclusively in noncredit courses.
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2019-20: The CCCApply application suite underwent a major redesign and is now fully accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies, mobile device-friendly, and supports full Spanish-language translation.
The CCCApply Advisory Committee oversees the application suite and determines new features that ensure compliance with state and federal legislation. The Technology Center facilitates meetings, documents change requests, change orders, and data dictionaries, and implements features based on the decisions and advice of the committee.
More Information
CCCApply Public Documentation
CCCApply.org (Student-facing website)
CCCApply Suite Flyer
CCCApply Noncredit / International / College Promise Flyer
OpenCCC & Systemwide ID
OpenCCC is an initiative to establish one systemwide ID for every California Community Colleges student. OpenCCC provides a way to tie together student data to better outcomes and institutional improvement as students swirl among our colleges while taking advantage of a variety of new online services. In addition, having one systemwide student account, known as CCCID, will help provide a single sign-on for students.
With the roll out of OpenCCC and the CCCID with the new CCCApply application for admission, over 10 million students now have an OpenCCC account and a CCCID. Current studies show just over a two-tenths of one percent (0.002) duplication factor on these records, making them very reliable as a way to identify student data.
Student-centered Design
Full Spanish translation and a mobile-friendly interface mirror the look and feel of the CCCApply suite of applications to provide students a seamless application experience.
Security Controls
To ensure the security of millions of student records containing personally identifiable information, our cloud hosting provider and our security practices and controls meet the highest industry standards (currently SOC 2.0 and ISO 27001).
Utilizing Outcomes Data
As the CCCID matures and all CCC students get OpenCCC accounts, we will work with the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office to incorporate the CCCID into the MIS data so that outcomes data in MIS can be tied to pre-enrollment data in CCCApply, assessment data in CCCAssess, education plans, and more.
Future Developments
By employing machine learning technologies, we will better identify and prevent duplicate accounts during the account creation process, thus driving duplicates below one-tenth of one-percent (0.001).
More Information
CCC Data & Data Warehouse
Systemwide applications generate actionable data that can improve student outcomes and facilitate institutional improvement. CCC Data allows information from these applications to be aggregated to provide college researchers with the data that may help to inform personalized experiences for students, and to support research opportunities and decision-making driven by legislation and the greater strategic vision of the California Community Colleges.
CCC Data, supported by the Data Services Program (DSP) initiative, is part of the CCC Systemwide Technology Platform developed to provide shareable services to the colleges.
CCC Data consists of:
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CCC Data Lake, used to collect data from a variety of sources, storing these data as changed over time. The Data Lake is used to populate the Data Warehouse and enable data mining and auditing.
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CCC Data Warehouse, which acts as a structured source of master data, segmented by MIS code, for use by college researchers. The Data Warehouse currently includes data from CCCApply, CCC MyPath, the Multiple Measures Placement Service, COCI and C-ID.
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CCC Data Warehouse Report Server, which provides a means for researchers to access their college’s data. Direct connections to data in the Data Warehouse are also supported.
More Information
CCC Data flyer
CCC Data presentation, CISOA Technology Summit, February 2021
CCC Data Warehouse Public Documentation
SuperGlue
SuperGlue is an integration architecture developed by the California Community Colleges Technology Center to allow disparate Student Information Systems (SIS) to connect in a standardized way to systemwide technologies developed by the Technology Center or purchased by the CCC Chancellor's Office, such as the Multiple Measures Placement Service and the Canvas course management system.
SuperGlue provides a secure, robust framework for data exchange between these systemwide products and the colleges who use them. A key objective is to integrate all Chancellor’s Office-sponsored technology initiatives without putting additional burden on local college IT departments. The architecture has three main parts:
College Adapter
The college adapter is a software component that is installed locally behind a college’s firewall to facilitate data running in and out of the college’s SIS. It enables disparate SIS’ to communicate in a standardized way through a cloud service, such as the Canvas course management system.
Standardized Data
An SIS configuration layer marshals SIS data, and moves it in and out of standard data models.
Data Exchange Using MDM
A data exchange model built around Master Data Management (MDM) gives each college flexibility to choose their SIS, and whether/how often to synch it with the centralized applications. MDM eliminates multiple point-to-point data exchanges across the systemwide products and colleges and replaces them with a single point of reference for reading and writing data.
More Information
For more about SuperGlue, explore the CCC Glue: College Adaptor discussions on the CCCTechnology staff helpdesk.
