Importing student profile photos in bulk

Students can upload a profile photo to their Merit page themselves, but there may be instances where your institution may want to upload profile photos on behalf of students. This might be done when creating Merit pages for incoming students, or when getting ready to do a student import. 

Merit supports this with our bulk photo upload process. Note that this process is done by a Merit representative, and is not a feature in your Merit account.

If you wish to begin this process for your institution, the first step is to contact Merit.



Location of profile photo on student Merit page:






REQUIREMENTS & STEPS

After contacting Merit, here are the requirements for a bulk photo upload:

1. You must first do a student import for your Merit account. 

2. After doing a student import, you must name each photo file using the student's email address. So for example, if the student's email address was john-smith@school.edu, then John Smith's photo should file must be named john-smith.jpeg.  In Merit, the student's email address is a unique ID, which allows us to match the  photos  with the correct students. 

We support .jpeg, .png, and .gif file formats for this process. 

Merit will only add a photo if a student does not have an existing profile photo. We will never overwrite a profile photo that has been added by a student. The student portrait image displayed on a student's page is 280 pixels by 280 pixels, but if the imported image is not that size we will automatically resize and crop the image to fit.

3. After naming the photo files correctly, you must provide the photos to Merit. Let us know when you're ready and Merit will set up a Dropbox File Request so that you may securely transfer the files to us. 

4. Merit will import the photo files.