On the Road with Slate: A Field Guide for Fairs and High School Visits 🚗

🏫Recruiting season means crowded gymnasiums, basement Wi-Fi that drops every five minutes, and a blur of student conversations. If you are still relying on paper cards or planning to "enter everything once you get back to the hotel," you already know what happens: data entry piles up, and good conversations slip through the cracks.

A phone or tablet with Slate can handle most of the heavy lifting on the spot. Here are four ways to use it effectively on the road.

1. Set Up an Inquiry "Kiosk" (Without Showing Off Your System): Letting students type their own information saves a massive amount of time, but you don't want them poking around your administrative screens or seeing the previous student's contact details.
   • Use the Public Form URL: Don’t log into Slate's backend and hand over the screen. Pull up the public-facing link for your travel form in a clean browser tab.
   • Turn Off Browser Auto-Fill: Head into your tablet's Safari or Chrome settings and disable form auto-fill. Otherwise, the second student in line will see the first student's name, email, and phone number pop up as suggestions.
   • Make Sure It Resets Cleanly: Check that your form either redirects back to a blank page on submit or includes a clear "Register Another Student" link so the screen is ready for the next person in line.
   • Create a QR for the Event: If you have a lot of students or not enough time to talk to everyone, have a QR for your event registration to be displayed that students can scan with their phones and fill out the registration form later if needed.
2. Ditch the Manual Check-In and Scan Passes: For events using QR codes or Slate-generated passes, searching for students by name one by one creates an immediate bottleneck.
   • Scan Right from the Browser: Open your event roster in the Slate mobile interface, tap Launch Registration, and look for the bracketed scan icon.
   • Instant Attendance: Aim the camera at the barcode on the student's phone or printout. It matches them to the roster and marks them as Attended immediately.
3. Have a Plan for Bad Wi-Fi🛜: High school cafeterias and gymnasiums are notorious dead zones. When signal disappears, don't let it stall your table.
   • Grab the Bare Minimum Offline: If the online form will not load, open the Notes app or a basic spreadsheet on your phone. Collect just three things: First Name, Last Name, and Email Address. You can search for them or hand the list to operations for a batch upload once you are back on campus.
   • Never Hammer the Refresh Button: If a student hits submit on a form and the browser hangs on a weak cellular connection, resist the urge to refresh repeatedly. That is the easiest way to generate duplicate records in your database. Let it finish processing, or wait until you get to an area with better coverage.
4. Log Notes While the Details Are Still Fresh: The most valuable takeaways from a visit—a student's unique portfolio, an unusual major interest, or a chat with an influential counselor—are the easiest things to forget after a two-hour drive to the next school.
   • Use the Five Minutes in the Parking Lot: Before turning on the car, pull up the record, open New Interaction, and dictate a quick note using your phone's voice-to-text.