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The Knowledgebase

Study Abroad: Withdrawing an Application

Applicants

Applicants are able to withdraw a program application during the pre-decision phase by selecting the 'Withdraw' button next to the program name on the Applicant Home Page. The applicant will then be prompted to enter a reason for withdrawing the application, and the application will be given the status of 'Withdrawn: Pre-Decision'.


The applicant can withdraw their own application at any time (even if the deadline and/or decision date have passed) as long as they remain in the Pending status, or an alias of the Pending status. Up until the program deadline, the applicant can choose to "Reinstate" their application on their own if they wish. However, after the deadline has passed, the applicant can no longer reinstate the application on their own. They must have an administrator do that for them.
 
Important Note: An applicant does not have the option to reinstate their application in the Applicant Experience. They would need to contact an administrator to discuss their plans so that the admin could perform this action for them. 
 
Once the application deadline and decision date have both passed and the application has been accepted, the application can no longer be withdrawn by the applicant in the same way. At this stage, the applicant must select the 'Decline' option in the 'Commit to Participate' panel of the Program Application Page. When an application is withdrawn in this manner, the status is changed to 'Withdrawn: Declined'. Applicants are not allowed to 'Reinstate' their applications after clicking on the 'Decline' button without the assistance of an administrator.
 
Applicants are no longer able to withdraw from a program on their own in any way once they have clicked on the 'Commit' button after acceptance.  Only an administrator is allowed to change an application to withdrawn after the applicant has chosen to commit to a program.
 

Administrators can withdraw an applicant from a program at any stage of the application by accessing the Student Application > Status > Status Dropbox and choose 'Withdrawn'. The status of 'Withdrawn: didn't commit' can be chosen by an administrator to distinguish the applications that were approved, but the applicant neither committed or declined. 

 

 

Admins

Frequently, there will be applicants that do not complete their applications for an application cycle and do not respond to the reminder emails by withdrawing their applications.
 
It is a standard practice for an administrator to withdraw the incomplete apps at the end of each application cycle.  This can be done individually by selecting each application, clicking on the Status tab, choosing 'Withdrawn: By Staff,' then clicking 'Update.'  However, if you have a lot of applicants to withdraw, you can do it in batches using the 'Batch status change' in the Options box at the top of the report, after querying for the relevant group of applicants.
 
By withdrawing these apps (as opposed to scrubbing the apps), you preserve important information about people who fail to follow-through on going abroad, information which you may want to do something with at a later date. Since the applications have been withdrawn, they won't show up in search results by default.  In addition, the sub-status of 'By Staff' allows you to identify which applications were withdrawn for which reasons.