This article is intended for high school counselors with administrative rights and serves as an overview of the tools available in the ADMIN > SETTINGS menu and how to best use them. Local Context and Reports are also briefly introduced.

College Kickstart offers many options to give you the flexibility to customize the application to meet your needs. We encourage you to work with your relationship manager to decide what will work best for you.

If you would like to watch the related CK201 webinar on administrative features, please visit this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/KukVz_rzYQpuTeSDcyWu8lh8fq4FB0u_oPnAJoHbV7S7V41cgQuh4ecOMrcQPEu2.D-ic82xzCVSPMJJl?startTime=1676393105000 (presented Feb 14, 2023 by Marco Ambrosoli)

Where to get help

- All Settings panels have a question mark icon in the top right corner that links directly to a support article with additional information
- You can always contact your Relationship Manager if you have any further questions

Where is Settings

Admin counselors have access to the Administrative Dashboard, which you can access by clicking the link titled 'ADMIN' at the top of the page. To access Settings, click the green button titled 'SETTINGS' in the Administrative Dashboard.

Settings Panels

Settings panels are grouped into three categories: Manage Counselors, Manage Students, and Global Configuration. Here, we'll briefly go over each panel in the order they appear on the Settings page.

Manage Counselors

The Manage Counselors is the first panel located in the Manage Counselors section.

What is it?: The manage counselors panel allows you to add, edit, and delete counselors in your organization. You can edit counselor names, emails, and admin privileges. You can also resend welcome emails to counselors if they forgot or want to reset their password.

For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: How do I manage Counselor accounts?

Manage Students

All panels that involve creating, updating, and deleting student accounts will be found in the Manage Students section of the Settings page.

Add Students

What is it?: This panel is used to add students into College Kickstart. You can manually add individual students in the table or add students in bulk with an import tile.
Bulk import: If you want to add students in bulk, click on the green button titled 'IMPORT FILE' at the bottom of the panel.
Reminders: We highly recommend using the template file to avoid error during import. You can download the template csv file by clicking the green 'TEMPLATE' button near the top of the panel. When saving your file as CSV, make sure you select the option to Save As or Export to CSV UTF-8 if possible. This will preserve non-English characters in the student names.
For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: Can I create Student accounts in batch?

Assign Students

What is it?: This panel allows you to change counselor visibility settings for your school and update which students are assigned to each counselor.
There are three different counselor visibility modes:
- Only assigned counselors can view plans and make changes (default)
- All counselors can view plans, only assigned counselor can make changes
- All counselors can view plans and make changes

To change student assignments to counselors, click the green button at the bottom of the panel titled 'CHANGE ASSIGNMENTS'.

Reminders: Contact your Relationship Manager to discuss which counselor visibility setting is right for you.
For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: Can I reassign students to another counselor?
Note: If you are in Advanced counselor visibility mode, please refer to this section of the article for more details: Advanced Assignment

Update Profiles

What is it?: This panel allows you to update student GPA, test scores, rank or rigor. You can update individual students or in bulk by importing a file.
Bulk import: If you want to update profiles in bulk, click on the green button titled 'IMPORT' at the bottom of the panel.
Reminders: This is done separately from uploading the student roster. You can update student profiles at any time of the year. We highly recommend to use the template csv file to import student profiles, which you can download by clicking on the green button titled 'TEMPLATE' in the panel that opens after clicking 'IMPORT'.
For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: Can I update a student's academic profile?

Convert Students

What is it? This panel is used to convert students accounts from counselor-powered mode to student-powered mode. You can select individual students or all students that you wish to switch to student-powered mode.
Reminders: Once you convert a student account to student-powered mode, you cannot go back to counselor-powered mode. Tell students to check their spam folders if they did not receive their welcome emails. We also recommend to contact your school's IT resources to allow 'collegekickstart.com' and 'college-kickstart.com' email domains so that they are not seen as spam or blocked.
For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: Can I convert Student accounts to be Student-powered in batch?

Deactivate students

What is it?: This panel is used to deactivate one or multiple student accounts if needed.
For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: How do I remove Student accounts from the Dashboard?

Global Configuration

Hide List Grades

- What is it?: This panel controls the visibility of the list grade. There are three options for the display of list grades: hide, do not hide, or hide until a selected date. When the list grade is hidden, all references to list grades are removed from the user interface and PDF reports.
- Reason to hide list grades: Especially during the earlier stages of the application process, counselors may not want their students to focus on their list grades. Some students may feel deflated and less engaged to move forward after seeing a low grade, so hiding the list grade can be beneficial.
- Reminders: List grades are not hidden by default.
- For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: Can I hide a List Grade during the early planning stage?

Freeze Plans

- What is it?: This panel controls if and when you would like to freeze student plans. When students plans are frozen, students can no longer make changes to their plans. Counselors can view and make edits to all students' plans.
- Benefit: By the time Oct/Nov arrives, some schools like to freeze student plans to keep students' school lists in place. Freezing plans also puts the student accounts back under the counselor's control even if they were converted to student-powered mode.
- Reminders: Both counselors and students will receive advance notice warnings starting 2-weeks prior to the freeze date.
- For more details on this panel, please refer to this article: How does the Freeze Lists setting work?

Local Context

What is it?: Local Context enables high schools to upload their local admission data to use instead of using the national admission data.
Benefit: Utilize your school’s historical data to more accurately categorize schools in your students' plans.
How to Achieve: Talk to your Relationship Manager to get started on configuring your Local Context.
Reminders: You can save your work if you want to configure Local Context in multiple sittings. Make sure to PUBLISH when you are finished configuring the local context!
For more details on local context, please refer to this article: Understanding Local Context

Reports

What is it?: Outcomes reports are available for high schools that upload their historical outcome data. They can help give insights on the impact of using College Kickstart, admission and enrollments, and as well as Test Optional outcomes.
To see the full list of reports, please refer to this article: What Reports are Available for High School Counselors?

Getting Started for High School Counselor Admins