2008-2009 Common Application Goes Up Tommorrow

The 2008-2009 Common Application will go live online tommorrow, with some interesting new changes and additions.

Students will now be able to access a search engine to help students sort and compare the 347 colleges which are Common Application members. With a few clicks of the keyboard, you can identify colleges that are a set number of miles from your home, in a specific type of campus setting, or that offer particular majors. After you've identified colleges, you can then compare up to three institutions at a time based on admissions criteria, academics, costs and financial aid, and student body characteristics. You'll even be able to print out a map showing the locations of various schools for future campus visits.

This year's Common Application will also include a small handful of questions that students can answer differently for individual schools, within the Common Application itself, rather than having to create an alternative version before each submission. The questions that can be changed inbetween submissions to different schools include: academic and career interests, entry term, intent to apply for financial aid, and the admissions decision plan (i.e., Early Decision, Early Action, Regular Decision, etc.) However, in order to make any other changes between submissions, students will need to follow the Common Application procedures for creating an alternative application, which last year caused confustion for some students.

Colleges themselves will be able to "supress" certain answers. For example, a test-optional college may tell the Common Appliation to supress all self-reported standardized test scores. Colleges will also have the option to supress social security numbers and answers to disciplinary questions on the Common Application. It is not clear yet, however, how the Common Application or individual colleges will convey whether the answers to these questions are being supressed at individual schools. I would advise students to ask the colleges they are applying to directly about these issues if any are of concern to applicants.

Other changes to this year's Common Application include: the addition of a space for reporting IB scores, a more detailed format for the sections on academic honors and extracurriculars (although it appears that the number of honors and extracurriculars a student may report may be more limited than in the past), and the ability to upload formatted essays to the main essay section. In previous years, formatting was lost in the uploading process. Finally, selected high schools will be piloting a program this year that will allow for the electronic submission of Common Application recommendation forms.

If you're a rising senior, it is a good idea to spend a few minutes sometime over the summer registering for the Common Application, reading its FAQs so you understand how it operates, and playing around with some of the features. Doing so now, will give you plenty of time to get any possible questions answered before submission deadlines start hitting this fall.