As part of the Action Plan, College Kickstart dynamically determines an optimum due date for the student.  Wherever possible, we try to allow the student to capitalize on a rolling admission school as an early admission opportunity to help minimize wasted motion.

Several factors are considered in determining the due date:

• Where the rolling admission school is ranked on a student's list.
• How long it takes for the school to render a decision once the application is complete.
• How the school has been categorized for the student.
• Whether there are hard merit scholarship deadlines to consider.
• The due dates and notification dates for the other schools in the student's list

Example:

Let's say that a student will be applying to six schools:

The list consists of one rolling admission school, the University of Minnesota - Morris (UMM), and five regular decision schools due on 11/30.

When you click on RUN KICKSTART, College Kickstart suggests a due date for UMM based on the factors described above as part of the Action Plan.  In this case, we can see the following:

As can be seen, College Kickstart is attempting to allow the student to capitalize on UMM as an early opportunity.  Because the UC campuses are due 11/30, College Kickstart schedules UMM to be due on a date that provides a decision prior to having to submit the UC applications.

This can be seen in the Details Tab for UMM:

Because there is a 3 week turnaround time to render a decision at UMM, the suggested latest due date is 11/7 to be notified in advance of having to turn in the UC applications in Wave 2.

In summary, College Kickstart dynamically determines a due date for a rolling admission school with an eye towards allowing it to be treated as an early opportunity for the student.  Several factors are considered, including where the school is ranked in the student's list, how long it takes for the rolling admission school to render a decision, the due dates and notification dates of the other schools in the list, how the school has been categorized and whether there are hard merit scholarship deadlines to consider.

A couple of notes:

• We deliberately try to limit action plans to no more than two waves to minimize confusion.  In other words, if there were multiple rolling admission schools we would not create more waves.
• We also handle schools with multiple priority windows in a similar fashion.
• In cases where there are hard institutional merit scholarship deadlines for likely schools on a student's list, we will enforce those deadlines.