Under a typical rolling admissions process, applicants may submit applications at any time and often to future terms but it is still essential to the health of your database to annually maintain periods and rounds. This practice provides a window in which institutions can strategically review the application process and implement necessary updates. It is best practice to update periods and rounds after they have finished processing (and have released decisions on) the majority of application records. Institutions may refer to this window as their “quiet” time.

Academic cycle reports can be built using the term data stored at the application field level (entry term does not make for a good round name). Reporting based on the period is not necessary and wouldn't be recommended for rolling admissions practices.

• A period year does not necessarily reflect either an academic year or a calendar year. 

• Institutions with an application process based on a traditional academic cycle (hard open and close application dates) may map the period year to reflect the academic year from September to June.

Institutions that accept and release decisions on applications on a “rolling” basis or have a mix of “rolling” and traditional “hard” deadlines may choose to not include the period-year association in the name or year setting of the active period (or the round) so that the active period and round will appear consistently for applicants from one cycle to the next.

While a Rolling Admissions cycle means that the application is never "closed," it is important that annual maintenance and updates are made each year to promote the health of your database. This maintenance allows for:

• the archiving of old applications

• the prevention rules from unnecessarily running on older applications

Step 1: Create Archive Round in an Archive Period

Create the archive period and round one time when first establishing this maintenance structure.

Step 2: Move Applications Backward to Archive Round

Using Query Batch Management, move applications to the archive round as often as needed, at least once per year.

When application terms close for each review period, or at least once per year, all decided and closed applications may be moved to the inactive period and round for archiving using Query> Round> Batch Management. This is important for the health of a Slate database as many rules and processes will be filtered by only the active period.

Round Batch Management

Using Query> Round> Batch Management is necessary to keep only active applications in the active period.

  Best Practice

Use a test environment to test the Round Batch Management process before taking action in production.

1. Create the query outlined below in the production environment, but do not execute.

2. Refresh the test environment.

3. Run the query in the test environment to evaluate the results before executing it in production.

4. If the results do not reflect the desired results, make modifications in the production environment and repeat steps 2 and 3.

If the results do reflect the desired results, navigate back to the production environment and run the query.

This will update the round for all applicants in the query from the original round to the destination round.