Suggestion for changes in the admission portal processes

[majkah0]

Context:
This is to document some issues that were encountered during the admissions of batch7 and suggestions how to deal with them.
Issues:

• Applicants inadvertently starting the test
• Too much/not relevant/inconsistent text in the portal.
• Acceptation emails that ended in spam, so the applicants did not know that they were accepted
• Portal crashing on an infinite loop

Goal(s):

Suggested actions:

• Consider sending important emails about admission manually instead of from the portal.
• Make the access to the download of the coding test a two step process, like in the coursera courses - have an eye-catching pop-up that asks you to confirm if you really want to download the test. Something in color, with a clock, saying that the time starts now.
• Decouple the setting up of the environment and the test - the time should start running only after you download the test. Ideally, there would be just one environment and the instructions for setting it up would come before accessing any SLU/test material.
• Modify the portal so that we can see when an applicant downloads the test.
• Put the agreement of the code of conduct and all the information about the course to a later stage, after the applicants pass the test, There is too much text to read in the portal and I don't think that people have the nerves to read it during the admissions. It also potentially distracts from the really important information. The code of conduct is only relevant for successful applicants who will actually become students.
• Modify the portal so that it stops execution of an exercise after some timeout.

Acceptance criteria: