"nested" forms in MVC

I understand that nested tags are <form>

not valid, but I would like to get similar functionality.

I have a form used to create a user profile and on this form I would like to allow the user to specify one or more schools they attended.

In my current setup (below) I can only submit one school per form. I've removed validation and labels from my view to simplify this issue.

View:

<% using (Html.BeginForm())
   { %>
<div>
    <fieldset>
        <legend>Basic Information</legend>
        <%: Html.EditorFor(m => m.Name) %>
        <!-- more input fields-->
    </fieldset>
    <fieldset>
        <legend>Schools</legend>
        <%: Html.EditorFor(m => m.SchoolName) %>
        <!-- more input fields -->
    </fieldset>
    <p>
        <input type="submit" value="Create" />
    </p>
</div>
<% } %>

      

        
        
        
      

    

This view is strongly typed for ProfileViewModel

, which contains all property fields. My controller contains a very simple activity Create

that saves the entries to the database. This works great.

What I would like to do is allow the user to add multiple schools using this form. In asp.net, I used UpdatePanel to achieve what I want, but everything I've read suggests that it is standard in MVC to use PartialView and jQuery / ajax calls.

• If I were to include the Schools section of my form in the PartialView, how would I get this PartialView, which is nested in another form, to “submit” and “update” without affecting the main view?
• How do I change my view models to reflect this? Should I save List<School>
  
  in ProfileViewModel
  
  that contains all the added schools, or is there a better way? Should I pass SchoolViewModel to PartialView?