It is so nice that we have a standardized way of applying to college. Fill out one form and write the necessary essays and you’re done! Oh wait, that’s not how that works? What do you mean there’s more than one form? Haven’t I already answered this question? There’s more than one website?
As all the seniors have learned in this process, the Common Application turns out to be not so common after all. Other than the basic general information, it’s really not common at all. Every school has their own section which is separated out in a menu and asks the same questions over and over again. Then, there’s Naviance which handles the things that Parker is responsible for submitting, like transcripts and recommendations. And on top of all that, after you submit, each school has their own portal to process additional information and tell you what information they’re missing.
This whole process creates unnecessary confusion that makes it more difficult for the students and the college counselors. I want to focus this column on several different sections of the process and my suggestions to improve them.
The first aspect of this process that I see room for improvement with is the Common Application itself. One of the biggest problems with the Common App is that everything is compartmentalized. You might not even know you need to write a certain essay unless you fill out a certain section of the school’s application and even then to find the prompt, you have to return to the school’s page. Since most people do not write their essays directly into the Common App, this process quickly becomes tedious and has the potential to result in an essay being forgotten or missed when you are preparing your application.
My solution to this is to have a way to view the Common App in a more open configuration that doesn’t force other sections to be closed when you open a new one. This way users could see all the prompts they needed to see at one time. I also think an import or export questions feature could be useful for essay type questions. Basically it would export the questions into a document that can be put into Google Docs or Microsoft Word and filled out and then when you’re ready all you would have to do is import it back in and the application would be filled out. Even these simple modifications would vastly improve the process of just filling out the application.
Another issue that I found with the Common App is that it is not designed for how people are going to be using it. As it stands, there is no way to give anyone else access to your application other than, I guess, sharing your password, which is not a great idea, and even then it wouldn’t bode well for collaboration when both of you were looking at the application. Adding the ability to add a counselor to the application would make it easier for them to check over your application. It could also potentially come with features that standardize how certain parts of the application should look for everyone in your grade. Having this system level of control would get rid of mistakes made in filling out school specific information on the application.
Then, once you apply to all the schools, each school sends you a link to create an account to “their own portal,” which from what I can tell is the same software licensed from some company. These portals allow you to see the status of your application along with some other helpful information but there is nothing that would prevent them from being one site instead under ten or, you know, also part of the Common App. If we have this website that is supposed to be a centralized place for applying to College, why isn’t everything there?
The best part about the Common App is that it’s not even common in the sense that you can apply to all the schools on it. Some schools either have their own application or use another Common App style site, all of which share the same fundamental flaws of the Common App.
At this point in time, we should be able to create an actually common application, where you know what you need to do, don’t have to retype the answers to the same questions or fill out redundant information and most importantly actually handle everything manageable from one common place.
