How Sorbonne International Built the Admissions Engine Behind France's #1 Master's Programme
Industry: Higher education | Employees : 40+ ClickUp users across directors, faculty, students, and alumni | Use case: Admissions pipeline, alumni database, and content planning
Sorbonne International, the non-profit behind Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne's tuition-free Master GEAI, has to narrow 6,000 applications to 20 places inside a five-week government window. Marcelo Santiago Maciel, a volunteer lecturer and alumnus of the programme, moved the process off Monday.com into one ClickUp workspace where structured forms replace unfilterable ministry spreadsheets, 750 candidate videos are reviewed in place, and directors interview with every document and note already on screen.
"Five years ago we had 400 applicants. This year we had 6,000 for 20 places, and about five weeks to decide.
Screening that on government spreadsheets full of free text would have been impossible — honestly, we would have given up. ClickUp is what makes the selection work."
Marcelo Santiago Maciel, Project Management Lecturer, Sorbonne International
What it takes to select 20 finalists from 6,000 applicants in five weeks
Every year, France's ministry sends Sorbonne International a single spreadsheet: 6,000 applicants for 20 places, free text, no structure, and roughly five weeks before the window closes. Getting it wrong means losing candidates who belong in the programme or spending weeks on ones who don't. The team rebuilds that data through a ClickUp Form so every answer becomes a filterable field, routes 750 video submissions directly onto candidate tasks, and puts 25 reviewers into assigned queues where every comment, score, and decision stays attached to the person it's about.
6000 applicants to 20 finalists
750 videos
40+ reviewers
Before ClickUp : One unstructured spreadsheet, 6,000 applicants, no time
Five years ago the programme received around 400 applications, and reviewers could work the list line by line. Then the number climbed to 6,000 while the ministry's deadline held at roughly five weeks. The file that started everything was free text, so one candidate typed 21 and the next wrote twenty-one, and nothing could be sorted or counted.
Candidate videos waited in a shared drive to be downloaded one at a time. Mid-cycle, with files already open on desks, Monday.com cancelled the partnership and left the team without a platform.
After ClickUp : Structured forms, videos in the record, one candidate view
A ClickUp Form replaces the government spreadsheet, turning free text into filterable fields and using formulas to derive region and normalize written answers into numbers. Each of the 750 candidate videos lands on its own task, giving 25 reviewers assigned queues where every note travels with the applicant, not the reviewer.
Stage-based permissions mean students who help with early screening never see final interview notes. The result: Master GEAI was ranked #1 in International Management in France this year, and it's the only tuition-free programme in the top ten.
Q: What's the most creative or unexpected way your team uses ClickUp?
A: "Our students are building the alumni database in ClickUp from scratch. We're an NGO and we need funding for the events we run free of charge, so staying connected to a thousand graduates matters. The students learn project management by actually doing it, and we end up with something we genuinely need."
Marcelo Santiago Maciel, Project Management Lecturer, Sorbonne International
About Sorbonne International
