- 11 Feb 2025
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Introduction to Periods and Rounds
- Updated 11 Feb 2025
- 1 minute read
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📚 Part of the series Application Building Phase 1: Initial setup
Periods and rounds are foundational structural elements in Slate applications.
Whether you plan on using a Slate-hosted application or importing applications, you must configure periods and rounds to collect application data.
Application periods
Periods are like an on/off switch for applications.
Slate databases are provisioned with two default application periods: Active
and Inactive
.
The active period is the only one applicants see when they apply. The inactive period cannot be selected by the applicant and is used to store completed applications.
Find application periods in Database → Application Periods.
Application rounds
Rounds give applicants options to select from when they create a new application, like Undergraduate or Graduate.
Having a round for each of your application types saves you from having to use complicated conditional logic on application pages.
Rounds must be associated with a period.
Find application rounds in Database → Application Rounds.
How you can structure your rounds
Applications can only be created by selecting or importing data to a round associated with an active period. Completed applications can be moved to a round associated with an inactive (archive) period.
When an applicant starts their application, they see the default application landing page, with a URL like yourinstitution.edu/apply
. Here, they select the application period and round:
Your process may call for more than one period and round.
Some example setups include:
By degree type
A single database can contain both undergraduate and graduate programs or have decentralized admissions processes. This example shows the different rounds to be activated and inactivated on different timelines.
By decision type
Your database may only need undergraduate admissions. In this case, you might have your rounds represent Early decision, Early action, Regular decision, and Transfer applications.
By graduate school
Graduate institutions can create separate rounds for their School of Business, School of Arts and Sciences, Schools of Nursing, and so on.
✨ TipUse Slate.org to share applicant data between undergraduate admission offices and high school counselors, independent counselors, and community-based organizations.
➡️ Up next: Creating application periods
Now that you have a general understanding of the relationship between periods and rounds, we can get started by creating your application periods.
📚 Next article in this series: Creating application periods