On Yahoo a box pops up asking why they want to join. We use it to screen and accept or reject members. We want that box. ?The second application contains several questions they must send in. We want to that to go to them automatically after we approve them as members.?
In addition we have about 6 welcome messages that have various purposes - guiding them around the forum, rules of the road, etc. We want those to also go out upon approval for membership - automatically
You can tweak your Welcome notice, set up a group guidelines email that is sent on a schedule, and you can screen pending subscriptions though a Pending Subscription Notice. Through a combination, you should be able to achieve what you want. Plus of course, you can make one or more posts into stickies.