How to make a user think they did something, while they didn’t?

I am new in this field and never posted on UXstackexchange, so please bear with me.

We are struggling with a returning issue for a webpage I am designing. I work on a university’s admissions portal for upcoming students. It is difficult to explain the exact criteria for why students come on this page and what they need to do, so I will do my best to keep it briefly.

Students come on this page when they apply at our uni. They either need to do nothing at all and wait for their diploma’s to automatically be verified by our system (some are still completing their studies so they have to wait several months) The other possibility is that, their previous studies do not grant direct admission, and they have to apply for admission.

The issue we were facing was that a lot of students applied for admission while they did not need to, this caused a lot of extra work for our admissions office. We explained via text if they had to apply for admission or not, this was not clear enough. We are creating a flow chart to help with their decision.

Our initial design was a checkbox: “I want to apply for admission”, which led to a “confirm” button and then to a pop-up with a warning, which finally led them to the “apply for admission” page. I think the fact that students could click on something was more appealing than doing nothing, what probably felt that they didn’t complete anything.

My question to you is; how should I design the option selection on this page? I want to design the page so, that students, who don’t have to apply for admission and just need to wait, also have the feeling that they have done something. The tricky part is that these students have to stay on this page, because they need to keep the possibility of applying for admission (they might fail to complete their studies, or will receive their diploma too late).

Thanks for reading! I hope I supplied sufficient information and not over-explained the situation. Any feedback or comments are greatly appreciated.

Current design: