Great help. I have played around with the code somewhat and came up with this...

WITH MEMBER [MEASURES].[COUNTAPPS] AS

(SUM(

PARALLELPERIOD([Dim Date 1].[CALENDAR].[Calendar Year Number],1 , [Dim Date 1].[CALENDAR].CurrentMember)

, [Measures].[EVENT]) )

SELECT {

([Dim Start Term].[APPL START TERM].[2013AY]),

([Dim Start Term].[APPL START TERM].[2012AY])}*

{ [MEASURES].[COUNTAPPS]} ON 0

,{[Dim Application Category].[APPLICATION CATEGORY DESC].CHILDREN} ON 1

FROM FACT_APPLICATIONS

WHERE ([Dim Date 1].[CALENDAR].[Calendar Year Number].[2013])

Unfortunately, it does need some tweaking. Again, I am pretty new to MDX but I think what this is showing me is all of applications for the year versus the previous year. That's great and I will use this for a separate measure however, what I really need it to do is to compare each start term from the 'beginning of time' or at least 1960 which is how far back my date dimension goes to a choosen date. The reason I need to go back so far (probably not back to the 60's but at least 3 years) is that some applicant defer their application to 1 or 2 years out and those deferrals still get captured in the deferred term. In easy terms, I would to "all time" to date(preferably yyyyMMdd)

In saying that, what would I need to do to modify my script to reflect the requirements?