What’s New? June 2021

New CAS Releases

We continue to make improvements to our platforms to enhance your experience with the software. Some of the most recent updates are below.

Import Programs from Previous Cycles

BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS carry over your programs (designations) in the current cycle’s production (i.e., live) environment into the new cycle’s Configuration Portal prelaunch environment. This carry-over process helps you review, edit, and prepare your program for the new cycle without having to build your program from scratch every year.

The Import Programs feature helps make your configuration process more efficient. Because BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS have overlapping cycles, you may need to create a new program after all your other programs have been transferred into the prelaunch environment. Instead of rebuilding your program in the prelaunch environment, you can import a program from a previous cycle’s production environment into the prelaunch environment. Now, you can use that program as a template, spend less time recreating the new program, and more time updating it for the new cycle.

Create Programs in Prelaunch Environment Only

For CASs such as BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS that use Single Program Promote (see above), you should only add and copy new programs in the Configuration Portal prelaunch environment. Your new programs are then reviewed, approved, and promoted from the prelaunch environment to the production (i.e., live) environment application.

To avoid confusion and ensure you’re creating programs in the correct environment, you can no longer add and copy programs in the Configuration Portal production environment.

Country Field for Manually Entered Foreign Institutions

When applicants report their academic history in the Colleges Attended section of the application, they select their schools from the standard college code list. When they choose their school from that list, additional data about the college is also recorded, including the college state and country. However, when an applicant manually enters a college that is not included in the standard college code list, they cannot provide additional college data.

Previously, when an applicant selected the options below, the schools defaulted to these corresponding countries:

• Unlisted English-Speaking Canadian Institution defaulted to Canada as the selected country.

• Unlisted US Institution defaulted to the United States as the selected country.

• Unlisted French-Speaking Canadian or Other Foreign Institution, there is no default country selected.

Now, when an applicant selects Unlisted French-Speaking Canadian or Other Foreign Institution, a new required field for the college’s country is listed. The manually entered schools no longer default to a specific country. This update to the application allows you to collect country data more easily for manually entered colleges.

This feature will become available in BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS, starting with the 2021-2022 application cycles. As part of enabling this new feature schools who are utilizing this information will need to update their exports/lists.

WebAdMIT Full Application PDF Displays CAS-Specific Gender/Sex Question Label

Previously, the full application PDF in WebAdMIT used the default Sex or Gender label no matter how the question appeared on the CAS application. For the 2021-2022 application cycle, BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS will be updating this question on the application to be labeled as “Sex” instead of “Gender.”

The new release now allows the full application PDF to display the label as it appears on the CAS application, so users can expect to see the updated label rather than the default label.

This update will become available in BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS, starting with the 2021-2022 application cycles.

Admissions by Liaison Phases Dropdown Shows Phases Grouping

Phase selection dropdown now display the Phase group names for Admissions by Liaison users.

If you have grouped your Phases, this update organizes the list of Phases and helps you be sure you are selecting the correct one. 

CAS API and Slate Integration

The CAS API and Slate integration will allow you to automatically create Slate application records from the BusinessCAS, EngineeringCAS, and GradCAS applications at the point of submission. The integration will also allow you to attach documents from CAS to the specific Slate records. You will be able to create these records without writing custom scripts.

Click here to learn more about the integration. You can also learn more in the CAS API Help Center.

2021-2022 Cycle Rollover Webinars

We hosted our second rollover webinar, titled Preparing for the 2021-2022 Cycle Rollover: New Features and Enhancements in May. For those of you who were unable to attend you can access the recording here.

We are hosting the next webinar in this series as part of the Liaison User Conference. Titled Optimizing Engagement Through CAS Participation and Communication, it is scheduled for Friday, July 16 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET. You can attend the webinar by registering for the conference here.

End-of-Cycle Report for 2019-2020

Last month, we released our second end-of-cycle report covering overall CAS data for the Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, and Spring 2021 terms. These reports include aggregate data highlighting insightful statistics you can use at your institution for trend and recruitment analysis, benchmarking, and strategic decision-making.

If you did not receive the report, click the links below to access the report:

2019-2020 BusinessCAS Cycle Report 

2019-2020 EngineeringCAS Cycle Report

2019-2020 GradCAS Cycle Report

We take your feedback seriously and want to hear from you. Please take this 3-minute survey so we can continue to strengthen what we include in these reports. The next report covering the 2020-2021 cycle will become available in summer 2022 after the cycle closes on March 31, 2022.