Every year, August 1st marks the start of a new academic cycle on Cialfo. During this time is also when the entire platform gets a refresh, in order to prepare students and counselors to get started for the new application season. This article shares how school counselors can continue to send documents for students who've applied in the previous year, even after the August 1st refresh.
Why August 1st?
Why August 1st?
The majority of universities open for applications starting August 1st, This is also in line with the yearly system refresh that Common App conducts, where first-year applications typically close for students and recommenders 3 working days before August 1st, and then reopen for the new application cycle on August 1st.
Read the 2023 notice on the Common App System Refresh here.
Sending via Common App
Follow these next steps closely to ensure documents can be received by the university.
Upon the system refresh by Common App on August 1st, the first thing the student needs to do is log in to Common App in order to roll over their account to the next cycle. Once logged in, they should select the first option for 'Applying as a first-year student'.
At the same time, the counselor will need to log in to Cialfo and enable sending for the student on their cDocs Profile. Note that this action will cause all document submission statuses as well as any previously prepared Common App forms to be erased, but is a necessary step for any document sending to happen after August 1st. Read here for more information on why you should enable sending.
Cialfo recommends all counselors download any previously prepared Common App recommender forms in order to save a copy of the answers before enabling sending.
Once sending is enabled for the student, the next step is for them to link their Common App account to Cialfo. Even if the student had linked their account before, the enable sending action would have automatically unlinked the previous account, hence this step would be required. Students can find this on their Applications page and can refer to this help article for step-by-step instructions.
Before moving to the final step, counselors should prepare a new School Report as well as Final Report. Any transcripts previously uploaded have also been preserved if required to be resent. However, if a Final Transcript has not yet been uploaded, counselors should do so here.
Last but not least, counselors will need to send out the School Report under the One & Done policy, then proceed to the individual university section to finally send out the Final Report with the Final Transcript attached.
For further information, click here to learn more about sending School Reports or sending Final Reports.
Sending via Parchment
The first step to this is for counselors to enable sending for the student on their cDocs Profile. Note that this action will cause all document submission statuses as well as any previously prepared Common App forms to be erased, but is a necessary step for any document sending to happen after August 1st. Read here for more information on why you should enable sending.
Cialfo recommends all counselors download any previously prepared Common App recommender forms in order to save a copy of the answers before enabling sending.
Once sending is enabled for the student, counselors may proceed to upload any new documents for the student on their cDocs profile. Any previously uploaded documents are preserved, and can be resent to universities should counselors choose to.
Finally, all that's left is to press the Send button. Upon successful submission, counselors should also see a confirmation ID and link to view the document status on Parchment.
Sending directly to universities
Note: This method happens outside of Cialfo, and serves as one of the viable options for counselors to continue sending documents for their students' applications.
Depending on the university of choice, there may be specific, designated methods that the university will accept transcripts. Counselors should check on the university's website and with the admission office for the full list of accepted methods.
Many universities will allow counselors to directly email transcripts to admission offices. Alternatively, they may also accept hard-copy transcripts that have been mailed to their admission offices. When counselors send transcripts outside of Cialfo and want to continue tracking their progress on document submission on the platform, counselors should set the delivery method as 'Mail' and mark the document sending as completed.
