New Online Application May Rival Common Application

The Common Application has become the gold standard for electronic applications. It's accepted by 300 colleges and universities, and each year millions of students use it to apply to college. That may change, if a Maryland company has its way.

The company, ApplicationsOnline, Inc. has introduced a competing online application product called the Universal College Application. Like the Common Application, the Universal College Application will let students apply to multiple colleges with a click of their mouse.

However, unlike the Common Application, which only accepts colleges for membership who use recommendations and essays as part of the admissions process, ApplicationsOnline will allow any college that wants to sign up to use it.

The dozen schools - including Harvard and Duke - that have already said they'll accept the Universal Application in addition to the Common Application, believe that will help them pull applications from a broader applicant pool, and increase college accessiblity for students from low income families and minority groups.

"It expands the potential pool of students to whm we might appeal," Marilyn McGrath Lewis, Harvard's director of admissions told Chronicle of Higher Education. "It's a way for us to reach out beyond the group that the Common Application has traditionally worked for."

Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. In the meantime, if the Universal College Application builds up steam, students may be faced with even more confusion about which method to use to apply to college than they have been when faced with the choice between a college's own application (most of which can also be filed electronically) or the Common Application. The answer to the quandry is simple. First, research which application method is used by the majority of colleges on your list. Then, if you're applying to schools that accept all three applications, compare them, play around with each application's interface, and use the one that feels simplest and more convenient to you. Colleges that make the commitment to use all three (or even two of the three) will treat all of the options equally.

Related Link: Application Service Firms To Compete, the Washington Post