<p>Private higher education institutions (PHEIs) in developing-country contexts face complex stakeholder dynamics when developing Business Intelligence (BI) for student admissions, especially where admissions decisions are shaped by tensions between academic quality, enrollment targets, and tuition-dependent institutional sustainability. This study examines how stakeholder salience can be operationalized, through a stakeholder salience and MoSCoW decision logic, to improve BI feature prioritization for admissions governance in a resource-constrained Indonesian PHEI. It addresses the gap in existing BI and higher education governance research by showing how differentiated stakeholder claims can be translated into traceable system-development priorities. It employs a qualitative case design at a private university in Indonesia. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 key informants and complemented by direct observations and operational admissions data. Stakeholder salience was classified using a Stakeholder Theory Salience (STS)-based scheme and integrated with the MoSCoW (<i>Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have</i>) method through a weighted decision rule. Conceptually, STS was used to determine whose claims should carry greater influence, while MoSCoW was used to translate those differentiated claims into development priorities. The weighting scheme is treated as an explicit analytic operationalization for structured qualitative comparison, rather than as an empirically estimated measurement model. Stakeholders were categorized into definitive, dormant, discretionary, demanding, and dependent groups, revealing a hierarchical governance structure in which five definitive stakeholders dominate admissions-related decisions. When prioritization was weighted by stakeholder salience, four BI functionalities consistently emerged as Must-have for admissions: visualization, analytical reporting, system integration, and tracking/monitoring. These findings show concretely that admissions BI in the case institution first requires capabilities for making applicant data visible, analytically interpretable, institutionally integrated, and operationally traceable before more advanced automation or collaboration features are pursued. The study contributes transparent stakeholder salience and MoSCoW decision logic for BI prioritization, in which final priority tiers are assigned through aggregated weighted convergence across stakeholder groups rather than by a fixed top-two rank cut-off. Its practical value lies in helping educational administrators sequence BI development while making visible how competing stakeholder interests are considered in admissions governance. Theoretically, it shows how stakeholder salience can be operationalized in system-design prioritization under tuition dependence and hierarchical governance. Practically, it offers a prioritization framework for admissions-related BI planning in resource-constrained private higher education institutions. Because the study is based on a single case and some external stakeholders were represented indirectly through triangulated institutional evidence, the findings are best interpreted in terms of analytical transferability rather than statistical generalization.</p>