When an application cycle has an application deadline that occurs after the decision date, that application cycle is labeled as a 'Rolling Admission' application cycle.
Rolling admission cycles provide the accepted/committed applicants with access to the post-decision phase prior to the application deadline. Accepted applicants are 'rolled' into the post-decision phase even though there may be other applicants still in the pre-decision phase for that application cycle.
This allows an office to immediately notify applicants of an acceptance or rejection of their application at the time when the status change is made by the administrator. As soon as an application is marked as accepted, the applicant will receive the status change notification email and their application will go into the post-decision phase. If a program is not set to rolling admissions, the office can accept, reject or waitlist any application but the applicant will remain in the pre-decision phase (and see the application as still 'pending' a decision) until the decision date is reached. All the decision notification emails for these applications will go out on the decision date and the applications will then all move into the post-decision phase on the same date.
Example: The program Berlin: History and Politics has a Fall 2018 application cycle with an application deadline of 03/18/2018 and a decision date of 01/01/2018.
Aimee Chen has applied to the program, and she is accepted into the program on 02/20/2018. Since the decision date has already passed, she is immediately notified of the status change when the staff makes it, and when Aimee goes to her home page, the application is displayed as 'DECISION REACHED'. When Aimee clicks on this application, she is shown the acceptance decision letter and clicks on the 'continue' button. She is brought to her application page. This application is now in the post-decision phase, and she sees all the post-decision process elements added to her application requirements even though the application deadline of the application cycle is still in the future.
To set a program to rolling admissions, go to the 'Dates' tab and set the 'Decision Date' to an earlier date than the 'Application Deadline' date. It is recommended to set the decision date to about a week before you think your office might active an app cycle thus begin accepting applications and to set the application deadline to the last date in which you want an applicant to apply for that particular application cycle (Note: the application deadline will also be the date on which you expect applications for that application cycle to be completed by the applicants).
Rolling admissions dates can be batch applied to multiple programs by going to the 'Apply Dates to Multiple Programs' section that will be seen on the 'dates' tab of the program builder when editing a program date record.
When a program has a rolling admissions application cycle, 'Rolling Admissions' will be displayed on the program brochure page along with the application deadline as seen in the screenshot below. The decision date is not displayed on the program brochure page: