Part 3
The Common App and its uncommon impact . . .
Exactly what is responsible for the other 90% of the current application explosion? There are several factors fueling the admissions evolution and some might surprise you. Perhaps the most important change is that we are now witnessing the first impact of a maturing internet. Its influence on the college admissions process can be seen in several areas.
Take a look at the relatively simple web application known as the “Common App”. This is today’s preferred vehicle for applying to more than 300 colleges, including the mythical “Top 100” most desirable schools. It’s a straightforward computer program, not particularly complex, but ideally suited for the web, high school students, admissions officers and the application process.
The experience of applying to college just few years ago was often a paperwork nightmare. There were countless different forms to complete and organize. Sometimes the individual pages were in different colors and an applicant had to make certain that they didn’t confuse the yellow “activities” page of one college with the yellow “athletics” page of another college. Of course since each college issued their own unique application, every essay was different. Applying to eight colleges meant composing eight distinct application essays. Perhaps the most fun was carefully typing or neatly printing a 10 page application, in a pre PC world, terrified that a typo would mean the agonizing choice of redoing the entire application or risking a rejection for being sloppy.
Until the introduction of the “Common App”, the physical act of applying to college was a self limiting process. Applying to three additional colleges meant giving up three more Saturdays during the Fall of senior year. While your friends were at the football game, you’d be sitting at the kitchen table typing and listening as your parents compared you to some “all A” classmate who’s applications were completed and who you will despise until your dying day. Now, applying to an additional three colleges means highlighting them from a drop down box and clicking the send button. As recently as 2001, there were only 40,000 online college applications were filed to American colleges and universities. By the time last year’s high school seniors had closed their laptops that number had increased to roughly three quarters of a million! This doesn’t make the Common App a villain. The online applications work better for both students and admissions offices. But the physical ease with which a student can file an application today is certainly responsible for a significant portion of the skyrocketing number of applications submitted. It’s impossible to establish exactly how many of today’s applications would disappear in a return to a “prepared by hand” environment but the estimates are significant.
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