Screening applicants needs matching of applicants' qualification with the requirements ofrndifferent departments of a university. Addis Ababa University admits applicants to variousrnprograms every year. The Admission and Placement Committee (APC) is responsible for thernplacement of regular students who have completed the General Freshmen Program and for thernadmission of new applicants into the Extension program. The problem of admission into thernuniversity is constrained by the intake capacity of the departments. In addition, the universityrnoffers applicants five choices. If one of their choices fails, the others are considered Screening such a large number of applicants takes a considerable amount of time from highlyrntrained faCIlity members. In addition, it creates a problem in accomplishing the task ill arnspecified time. The time of the staff can be saved by developing a knowledge-based system. 111rnthis research an attempt has been done to identify the problem and design the knowledge byrntaking the extension program applicants as an example. The study employed an interview and protocol analysis to acquire knowledge. Knowledge wasrnacquired from the committee members; printed sources and manuals. Production rules has beenrnused as a knowledge representation tool and was found to be appropriate. In order to show the viability of the expert system a prototype was developed usingrnKnowledge Pro for Windows. Knowledge Pro was found appropriate though it has somernlimitations with the database toolkit. The developed prototype expert system has shown that itrncan match both applicants and departments and provide a list of suitable applicants withrnslimy for the committee members. This undoubtedly relieves experts from routine work.