What IACAC 2026 Taught Us About Bringing Mobile Experience Passes to Campus

What Is IACAC and Why We Went

IACAC (the International Association for College Admission Counseling) held its 2026 annual conference July 14 to 16 in Pittsburgh, hosted on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Higher ed is a newer vertical for us, with the Pitt Stop Passport already live on Pitt's campus, so we sent Tay Rasmussen and Leena Riggs to build on that footing.

Educational sessions were closed to exhibitors this year, so everything below came from the exhibit floor, hallway conversations, and what we were already seeing play out with the Pitt Stop Passport registration during the event.

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Why Admissions Isn't Where a Campus Pass Fits

We walked in assuming our job would be helping schools improve yield. What we found instead: admissions offices already sell the transition experience hard, especially in international and graduate recruiting. That's closer to our roots in destination marketing than we expected, but it also told us admissions is the wrong buyer.

Admissions is guarded by nature. Schools compete institution to institution for the same prospective and admitted students, and they're not going to compare notes on a tool that touches recruitment. Engagement and transition support is the opposite. Schools swap ideas freely there, and some even partner across institutions. That gap between competitive and collaborative territory is the real go-to-market signal: the open territory is where a mobile experience pass belongs.

The Real Opportunity: Life After the Acceptance Letter

Students are saturated with apps. Another download competing for space on a phone isn't the answer, and that pushed us to rethink who inside a university we should build for, not just what format to use (video, quizzes, geo check-ins).

The shift points away from admissions and toward the offices running orientation, first-semester engagement, summer melt prevention, and summer camps. A campus pass could layer into recruitment events, welcome week, the first semester when students are most likely to disengage, and even Carnegie community engagement certification and town-and-gown initiatives that connect students to the businesses around campus. That last piece is a direct match for what Bandwango already does in destinations: get people out into local businesses.

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Every Campus Runs Like Its Own City

No two schools we talked to solve their engagement problems the same way. Same underlying issues, different bureaucracy, different politics, different fix each time. That tracks with how we already approach destinations: every DMO has its own local quirks, and the pass has to flex to match.

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An Early Look: The Pitt Stop Passport

While the conference ran, we were 2 days into supporting registration for the Pitt Stop Passport on the University of Pittsburgh campus, with our exhibit booth open on-site. It's early, but it's a live test of the transition and town-and-gown thesis above, built with a real campus instead of a hypothetical one.

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A Few Conference Highlights

The opening keynote from Kendra Janelle Ross, Head of Purpose and Experiences Design, set the tone early. A drumline from the Steelers welcomed attendees with Terrible Towels in hand, on theme for a conference built around "building bridges," a nod to Pittsburgh having more bridges than any other city in the world.

Brenda Armstrong, formerly of Visit Pittsburgh and now with Sojern, met us for drinks and pointed us toward the England match, where we ended up talking student transitions with the regional manager for Oxford Brookes and 5 other universities in her area. Cambridge English sent everyone home with Pittsburgh-themed tea towels, which turned into a running scavenger hunt among counselors hunting for the one with a gold star.

We also owe a return trip to the Heinz History Center, where the closing reception was held, and to the botanical gardens on CMU's campus. Both got bumped for this year but made the list for next time.

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What's Next

IACAC 2026 confirmed the fit is in transition and engagement, not admissions. We're taking that thesis into how we build the higher ed version of Experience Builder: campus-specific, buyer-specific, and tested against a real pilot instead of a guess.

If you run orientation, first-year experience, or town-and-gown programming at a university and want to see what a campus pass could look like, get in touch with our team.