#CommonAppProblems

With the first round of college admissions deadlines fast approaching, students across the nation are hearing some dreaded words- the Common Application is malfunctioning.

Used by a large majority of schools to review applicants, the Common Application- known to students as simply the Common App- was originally a relief to students because it meant they could fill out their necessary information only once for all of the colleges they were applying to.

However, this year’s students are agonizing over the new version of the Common Application, which is filled with a variety of bugs.

Swampscott High School senior Kenny Li, who has already applied to two colleges using the Common App, said that he experienced problems when formatting his essay. “I would try to submit my essay and the lines would merge together, taking out spaces or adding new lines. So I had to do it multiple times,” he said.

The Common Application is aware of many of their bugs and encourages students to contact them with any concerns. In response to issues formatting the essay, the Common App website published a statement: “Bold, underline, and italics will always carry over to Print Preview. Extra spaces will be removed automatically when you click continue. This means that you will not be able to indent your paragraphs. Colleges are aware of this formatting and take it into consideration when viewing your essay.”

Eventually for Li, the formatting worked. Other reported problems with the Common App include teacher recommendation letters failing to be sent to schools, overcharging to submit the Common App to a school, and previews or confirmations of the completed applications failing to load.

Senior Michelle LaConte also experienced problems with her applications. “My SAT scores appeared blank in the preview of the Common App,” she said. LaConte hopes the problem will be fixed since she also sent her scores directly to the college using the official SAT site.

LaConte, like Li, also experienced formatting problems with her essay. Even worse, her teacher recommendation letters claimed that they had been canceled. “Online, I saw that my requests for letters had been canceled, though right beneath that the site also said that they were in progress,” LaConte said.  

Colleges have been notified of the massive problems in the application process and want to ensure that students are not penalized for situations out of their control.

While some colleges simply suggest applying extra early to locate and fix any glitches in the process, other schools have graciously extended their deadlines to give students more time.

Schools such as Northeastern University and Boston College did not choose to extend their November 1 Early Action deadlines.

In an email to all of their prospective Early Action applicants Northeastern acknowledged the Common Application problems, stating, “this has raised the level of anxiety around the application process.”

The school also encourages students to contact their admission office with questions or problems and offers the unique alternative of checking their Twitter feed, @NUAdmissions, for updates, #NUapp.

Additionally, colleges such as LaConte’s choice Stonehill College have extended their deadlines for a week or two.

For senior Ellen Brooks, the extensions help a lot. “I haven’t experienced any problem with the Common App yet, but I’ve gotten a few emails from schools saying they’ve extended their early application dates based on Common App problems,” she said. Ellen hopes to apply to her top choices later in the month, thanks to the extensions.

No matter the specific issue(s), the overall theme of this year’s Common Application is confusion. We can only hope that the bugs will be fixed in time for Regular Decision applications.