Groups/Permissions/Users/members/ranks ahhh!

Im Stumped and Frustrated, someone plz help me. I'm going in circles...

Ok, I'm going to just describe what I'm trying to do:

I have a forum for Applications, for people to respond to a question post and basically apply to the forum.
When they register to the forum I want their initial group/rank/permission(w/e u call it) to only be allowed to view and reply to the Application forum.
Then if they are approved i want to be able to change their group/rank/permissions/whatever to be able to access the rest of the forum.

I don't want to create an application with fields, or an email approval. I need all the members to be able to see their response on the forum, and for their posts to be an example for new applicants.

So how do I create this group/rank/whatever, and how do i set which forums they can look at?

It seems so simple but when I create a new group and try to change the permissions there are either no boxes to check or the boxes are uncheckable. I'm obviously not in the right spot, or going about this all wrong.

Hopefully that makes sense...if not I'll clarify. Thanks in advance.

What I think you need to do is make a group and add all your current/regular members to that group.
For the forums you do NOT want the applicants to see you need to set the permissions of the forum to include the new group of your current members.
Initially set the forum permissions to admin. Then tick off your current/reg. members group (or whatever you call it)for view forum, reply etc.

Leave the forum with the application with permissions for ALL.

Once your new applicant is approved, you will need to add them to the current/reg. members group.

Well here an example of my prob.
I dont want the Apps to have access to this forum, but I cant uncheck 'read and view, or 'write and reply'.

See the drop down box below the forum title Randomness?
Change that from members to Admin.
Then the boxes for members shouldn't be checked off. you can then add the group permissions.

oh wow.
ur amazing. thank you