College Deadlines
This section provides a summary view of the application options, in addition to whether a school will accept the Common Application (CA), the Coalition App or the Universal College App (UCA). The My Application column shows the application option selected for the student in the Application Plan. Note that for 2016 in particular, some schools are members of the Coalition but do not yet accept the Coalition app.
The application type options include:
- Priority or Regular Admissions
- EA1: Early Action 1
- EA2: Early Action 2
- REA: Restricted Early Action
- ED1: Early Decision 1
- ED2: Early Decision 2
For transfer students, the deadlines for Fall, Winter, Spring or Summer sessions are provided for both Regular (Reg) and Priority (Pri) applicants.
Deadlines dates are kept as current as possible, but should still be checked for accuracy, particularly due to potential changes by the colleges. A link to help check the dates is available for some of the colleges in the very right hand column along with the date that the deadlines were last updated by GuidedPath.
Application Plan Details
Schools in the College Deadlines are displayed in alphabetical order. Select a row and then click the Edit Plan Details blue button to create, view, and edit the application plan.
The first time a plan is created it will have a template, or default set, of milestones.. This template should be used as a starting point and assumes a regular application submittal. The template that is used is based on the college specific milestones, if they are defined for the selected college, otherwise the organization default milestones.
Some basic adjustments that can be used to customize the application plan:
- Change the application type from the default Regular admissions to another application type. The application type options and deadlines available for the selected college will be shown in the dropdown. The application type displays as My Application on the College Deadlines page. Changing the application type also updates the college and student deadlines in the milestones grid.
- Mark the plan as ready, or complete, and schedule reminders.
- Specify a student deadline (different from school deadlines)
- Identify key milestones.
- Reset the milestones to defaults**
- Click Done to return to the previous screen
** When choosing to reset the milestones to defaults, if a college has a college-specific set of milestones defined, those will be used, otherwise the organization defaults will be used.
Some more advanced features that can be used to expedite the overall definition of application plans:
- Mark all milestones in the application plan as complete. Although the Progress pages can also be used for selecting a group of milestones to mark as complete, you can also do it right on the application plan.
- Save as college default - used to save the student's custom application as the college's default to be used in the future for all students.
- Apply to all incomplete plans - this allows a plan customized for one college to be copied to all other colleges for the current student.
Special processing is done to specify the Common Application for all schools that are identified as Common App Schools. If you have multiple schools that have similar application plans (particularly groups of schools like Apply Texas, University of California, or Florida), then you can use the checkbox at the bottom of the page, Apply to Student's Unaccepted Plans, to copy a plan from one school to a group of other schools.
Customize the Milestones
The milestones can be customized for each student for each college. The application notes and college information provided above the Milestones grid can be used to help determine what milestones are required. Milestones can be updated individually or as a group by selecting multiple rows and then the Edit Selected Milestones button. Similarly, milestones can be deleted individually or as a group.
For faster processing, use the Previous and Next buttons on the upper right hand corner to quickly navigate to the next college on the student's list.
Comments
14 comments
Correct, the check mark saves the changes. To set multiple milestones rather than individually, you have two options. In your organization setting, you can specify the milestones and the days offset from the college deadline that you want the student deadline. So if you prefer 3 days before the college deadline, set that by going to My Organization, Organization Configuration tab, Application - Default Milestones section. Then, when you select the application type college deadline, the student deadlines will adjust in bulk.
The other option for bulk modifying milestones is to set up one application plan just the way that you want it and then use the "Apply settings to All Unaccepted Plans" feature. This sets the application type and milestones plans based on the one that you select as your source. This can be especially powerful for groups of schools such as the University of California or other state systems that have common applications.
The application plans will populate based on the default organization application plan. Then, if a school is a Common Application school, the school specific application plan will created to include the Common Application. The other milestones need to be modified for each specific school by the advisor or student. So, if a school requires the SAT Subject Test, then the SAT Test Score milestone should be added with a Description of Subject Test. The reason that SAT Subject is not a separate milestone is so all SAT application requirements can be sorted together in the Application Progress area since they can be sent to the school at one time.
The data that is provided for each college comes from WinterGreeen Orchard House and is the most recent data available on the market, provided by the colleges on an annual basis. Many schools will accept the test scores after the application due date, and this is the case with Harvey Mudd. According to their website "For Regular Decision candidates, the January test date is the last test date for which we will accept scores." Since the January test dates are available in February, that is when the scores are due at the college.
Is there a way to make notes on a particular college on the My College List?
Currently, you can put a short note about a particular college on the Summary submenu of the College List. This note was meant to be for a key piece of information that you want to see during the Application Planning process as well. Examples are to apply to an honors program or to look at a scholarship.
We are adding in a full college comment feature that will allow a messaging type feature specific to each college for each student and/or advisor. This should be available in early spring.
The Discussions feature was released a few weeks ago that allows you and your students and families to keep notes about each college.
HI Kimberly and Jo-Ann
Is there a way the student can group their plan milestones/ deadlines by task (school transcripts, sending test scores etc.?)
and of course - be able to print a report for them to take away? Thanks!
Denise - Absolutely you can group milestones by task. On the Application Progress page, drag the column header "Milestone" to the row above where it says "Drag a column header and drop it here to group by that column". This feature allows you to sort by any of the columns, including milestone, college name, status, deadline, etc. This is not printable right now, but that feature will be coming. Note that students have this same sortable view from their account.
I want to eliminate the teacher and counselor recommendation milestonse from only the Cal State and UC schools. Is there a way to do this as a group so that none of the other schools' milestones are affected by the change?
Does the change only impact the student's plan I'm working on or will the change be made for those schools across all of my active students?
When I make these changes to a school's milestones will I have to re-do all of these milestones again next year when the data is refreshed from the data supplier?
Katie - Yes you can eliminate the teacher and counselor recommendations for only a subset of schools, without affecting other schools. This will be done for one student, and it will not affect other students. Here is the process that you can follow:
- Update and "Accept" the application plans that you do NOT want to be included in the group. This will be the schools that are not in the UC or Cal State system.
- Create your detailed plan for one of the UC schools, which includes removing the teacher and counselor recommendations.
- Select the checkbox at the bottom of the detailed plan that is "Apply settings to All Unaccepted Plans" and then save it.
- This will copy that plan to all the other UC and Cal State schools.
Note that if most of your students are applying to UC and Cal State schools, you can also make this change in your organization milestone default. This will create all new plans without those milestones and then you can add it in to the specific ones that require it.
Dates that are updated do not affect the milestones. You will get a warning message that a date is updated.
Jo-Ann - I'm not sure I was clear enough regarding my question. I'm located in CA and my students tend to apply to UCs, CSUs and out of state public and privates.
I know you are always working on new features. Will you have a feature in the future that allows the counselor to set the milestones for a school or group of schools only once so that every time I add a new student and then add schools to that student's list I don't have to re-do their milestones each time (delete or add teacher/counselor recs)? I know that I will have to review each school's milestone plan with each student, set student deadlines, and occasionally add a specific milestone, but it would be nice if I could adjust the milestones at the school level and have it always appear that way each time I choose that school unless I choose to customize the plan for a particular student.
The options that are currently available are to customize plans for all plans (all schools and all students) or for all plans for one student. I appreciate your request for an option to customize a plan for a specific school or set of schools (like the UCs), and this is a good idea for a future enhancement.
I am having a problem that was discussed in this thread but solved off-line. I accepted an application plan for one school and then wanted to copy it to all other schools but it didn't save the changes (which were all student deadline dates).
The copy to other colleges feature copies the milestones and college deadlines, but not the student deadlines. We are planning to add the student deadline,but it does not copy at this time.
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