Liaison News

More than 25 Graduate Schools Join Liaison’s GradCAS™ Community in Its First Year

Nov 28, 2018

Liaison shares the substantial growth of Centralized Application Service (CAS™) for graduate programs since its December 2017 launch

WATERTOWN, Mass. (November 28, 2018) — Liaison International, the leading provider of higher education admissions management and enrollment marketing solutions, today highlighted milestones reached in the year since the launch of GradCAS™, the Centralized Application Service (CAS™) for graduate schools and programs.

When they join GradCAS, graduate schools and programs gain access to a marketplace designed specifically to meet their admissions needs. The service includes an intuitive, modern application and application management and review software, along with document scanning and verification services supported by an applicant live support center. The comprehensive combination enables graduate admission staff to focus on more value-added tasks, such as recruiting and advising prospective students.

Since it was launched at the CGS Annual Meeting in 2017,  GradCAS has:

  • Been endorsed by the Common Application, the nonprofit with a mission to “promote access, equity and integrity in the college admission process.”
  • Begun forming an advisory board of graduate education enrollment leaders, including Jenny Rickard from the Common Application.
  • Seen more than 25 schools join the community with the goal to streamline admissions at their institutions. Current members include research universities; regional universities; historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs); law schools; health sciences centers (HSCs) and medical schools; and private universities and colleges located in every region of the country, in both rural and metropolitan areas.

“At Howard University, we develop scholars and professionals who will drive change and solve contemporary global problems,” shared LaTrice Byam, director of admissions and university registrar at Howard University. “While GradCAS will benefit all of our admissions stakeholders, we are especially excited that it will enhance the experience that we offer prospective students. Now that every Graduate School applicant will apply through GradCAS, we’re able to save them time by facilitating applying to multiple programs with one set of application materials and reduce frustration with real-time status updates and on-call applicant support.”

University of South Dakota chose GradCAS for similar reasons: “Our homegrown graduate application system was being retired, and we saw that as an opportunity to deliver a better applicant experience, introduce process efficiencies and save valuable staff time,” shared Brandice Durham, director of recruitment and marketing for the University’s graduate school. “We knew GradCAS was the solution for us because of the results we’ve seen from SocialWorkCAS™ [the CAS for social work programs] and CASPA™ [the CAS for physician assistant programs], two of Liaison’s CASs that are already active on our campus.”

Liaison’s Founder and CEO George Haddad is excited to see accelerated acceptance of GradCAS, as the service was launched to extend the benefits of a CAS to those graduate programs that are not supported by a professional association-based service. “Liaison is committed to building a strong, holistic pipeline of applicants with diverse backgrounds and skills since these applicants are tomorrow’s workforce,” he said. “GradCAS members will provide valuable insight into how our technology and services can help guide the future of graduate education, and we look forward to expanding the GradCAS community to include more schools with unique perspectives.”

To learn more about how your program, admissions office and students will benefit from joining GradCAS, visit Liaison’s booth at the CGS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC December 5-8, 2018. Additional information is also available at gradcas.org.

Over the last three decades, Liaison has helped over 40,000 programs on more than 1,200 campuses more effectively manage admissions through its Centralized Application Service (CAS™) technology and complementary application processing and support services. The higher education technology leader supports its partner institutions’ total enrollment goals by pairing CAS with its Enrollment Marketing (EM) platform as well as the recently acquired TargetX (CRM) and advanced analytics software Othot.